In the middle
Winter blues at SSV Ulm: After promotion to the 3rd league, the DFB is demanding a heated pitch. It doesn’t exist. Now players and fans are moving to other stadiums. Despite climate concerns, the city has to pay for the renovation.
Black and white fan scarf and a lot of patience: Marc Herrmann is one of the first to arrive. The 26-year-old belongs to the “Block F4” fan club. In a parking lot near Ulm’s Danube Stadium, he helps others find a place in one of the fan buses.
A home game of his club SSV Ulm 1846 Fußball is actually scheduled. But instead of cheering in their own stadium, the fans have to travel to Aalen, 70 km away. That’s more than an hour’s drive.
“When you go to the stadium, you have your routines,” says Herrmann. “You meet your friends in a bar beforehand and then go in together. Now you just meet in a parking lot and first take the bus to another city. It’s just not the same.”
Lots of snow means less income
Last year Ulm was promoted to the 3rd league. In winter, the German Football Association (DFB) requires pitch heating or a completely covered stadium in this league. There is neither in Ulm.
The aim is to “minimize weather-related game cancellations as much as possible,” explains the DFB when asked. The 3rd league is a “professional league” and therefore “depends to a considerable extent on TV money, the value of which is measured, among other things, by reliable game dates.” This means that if games are canceled or have to be postponed, it is also bad for the clubs’ financing.
While people used to play on snow, nowadays it disrupts the game. That’s why SSV Ulm is currently playing in Aalen for its winter home games. Because the local club was in the second Bundesliga a few years ago, the lawn there is heated.
Even if it’s not necessary on this game day – 10 degrees, no ice in sight. Commuting is inconvenient for Ulm fans. “It’s just annoying that basically a whole day is spent on a football game and that you have to get up early,” says one.
Nevertheless, the mood is quite good, after all they have never lost in Aalen so far. Almost 6,000 fans came to cheer on their team against league rivals SV Waldhof Mannheim 07. If the game were in Ulm, there would probably be twice as many, calculates Markus Thiele, the club’s managing director. For each “home game” away from home, “a mid-five-figure amount of audience revenue is currently lost.”
Where is climate protection?
At least Ulm doesn’t have to pay a fine because the winter home games take place in an alternative stadium. This is an exception for those promoted to the 3rd league in the first year. Starting next season, Ulm would have to forego half of its television income.
That’s why lawn heating is needed now. Because the Danube Stadium belongs to the city, it is now its responsibility. And Martin Bendel is not at all enthusiastic about it. The finance mayor of Ulm has a lot to do – for example, ensuring that money is made available to convert daycare centers, schools and service buildings to be climate-friendly and energy-efficient.
But now he has to fork out 1.4 million euros to finance grass heating for the stadium, which is “the most pointless investment” of all, complains Bendel. For him, the DFB guidelines are “out of date” in view of the climate crisis. As long as it is more important “that TV money is regularly paid out every Saturday” and one is not prepared to think about how games in the professional league could be organized differently, around the frosty days, “climate protection obviously has an impact still too little importance”.
Doubts on the fan bus too
It’s not just the mayor who finds the DFB’s guidelines questionable, some on the fan bus also have doubts: “Rules are of course there to be followed,” says Kathrin Hartmann, but the lawn heating rule doesn’t necessarily make sense.
Friedrich Fabris agrees: “It needs to be designed more relaxed overall. Not every small club can get up and afford underfloor heating.”
At the moment, however, SSV Ulm is the only one of the twenty third division teams without pitch heating, emphasizes the DFB. Uniform rules should apply to all clubs in a league. In addition, lawn heating systems in the third league should be “operated as climate-friendly as possible”; for new systems it is even mandatory to only use renewable energies.
I prefer to just play
In order to convert the Ulm Danube Stadium, 30 kilometers of pipes have to be laid and the lawn has to be completely dug up. The system that the city is now forced to install will probably initially run on oil, which the DFB criticizes.
This in turn annoys Mayor Bendel. Although they want to connect the stadium to district heating in the medium term, it won’t happen quickly. In addition, “a pointless investment doesn’t make any better if it’s given a green coat of paint.”
The best energy, he thinks, is the one that you don’t use at all. “And that’s why it would be good if you just played football on this pitch as it is.”