Petry has held prestigious positions throughout his career so far. Since November 2021, he has been the director of marketing, sales and events at the German Sports Aid Foundation. During this time, he has significantly restructured and repositioned the large non-profit organisation for German elite sport and taken its marketing to a new level. Petry was previously managing director for Germany at the global sports marketing agency Octagon from 2017 to 2020 and a member of its European leadership team. The sports economist’s previous positions include various management roles at the sports sponsorship agency akzio!, now part of SportFive, including three years as managing director. He also served as head of corporate sponsoring at Commerzbank AG.
“In Karsten Petry we’ve managed to recruit the ideal person for our club to keep pushing our marketing and sales activities further,” said president and supervisory board chairman Dietmar Allgaier. “He convinced us with his wide range of experience and large network, as well as his personality and motivation. Karsten Petry combines what VfB Stuttgart needs in this period and in this leadership role: he’s an absolute marketing and sales professional and an experienced strategist, who always strives for innovative solutions and new ways. He’s cosmopolitan and an exemplary team player too. We’d like to express our thanks to the supervisory board of the German Sports Aid Foundation and its chairman Christian Seifert for the constructive, friendly and solution-focused talks.”
