On Wednesday there was Jour fixe, the weekly video conference with all club representatives at the handball Bundesliga. This time the excitement was great again, the evening before, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz had ordered a renewed ban on spectators for sporting events. From December 28th, football, handball, ice hockey and basketball fans will no longer be allowed into the stadiums and halls.
“We will have to unpack the bouquets of flowers again for partners, shareholders and sponsors,” says the managing director of the Handball Bundesliga, Frank Bohmann, half desperately, half cynically. The clubs are now again dependent on special courtesy. Petitions have become an unpleasant constant topic. “It’s a bit of a ‘daily greetings from the MPK'”, says laconically basketball league boss Stefan Holz about the recurring resolutions of the Prime Minister’s Conference.
The league bosses Bohmann and Holz as well as their ice hockey colleague Gernot Tripcke will connect to a video conference this Thursday. They stand for different sports, but they are all in the same boat. This boat has a leak and is slowly filling up with water. For almost two years now, the clubs have had to compensate for a loss of income. That increasingly goes to the substance. With every new corona wave, more water sloshes into the leaky boat. In handball, ice hockey and basketball, it is reportedly threatening the existence of more clubs than in football, which is, of course, also hard hit. After all: unlike the clubs in the Bundesliga and the second division, the other team sports and the third division football clubs can apply for political corona aid.
Empty seats: This is how it will soon look like again at the DEL Club Adler Mannheim.
(Photo: Thomas Frey / Frey-Pressebild / Imago)
It is about the “granting of cheap services to bridge loss of income” – in short: the “Corona help for professional sport” from the Federal Ministry of the Interior. These subsidies were supposed to expire at the end of the year, but will now be extended. Ice hockey league boss Tripcke nevertheless knows that further short-term decisions are required: “The more than 200 million euros from this pot, which have not yet been paid out, must not expire at the end of the year and must be saved over into 2022. ” In addition, the cap of 1.8 million euros per club must be raised. The ice hockey clubs would have already received this maximum amount, but they now need more. In total, a good 23 million euros were paid out to clubs in the top league in the past ice hockey season.
Bridging the current season in a makeshift manner is not even the worst problem for Tripcke. In the long term, the “emotional and economic consequential damage” is more dangerous for the clubs, because “shareholders and sponsors of the clubs, perhaps even some spectators, could lose interest in ice hockey.” Then the existential hardship of some clubs becomes exorbitant.
Soon even Basti Löwe won’t be able to wave the flag to cheer on Minden’s first division handball players: even mascots have to adhere to the ghost game rule.
(Photo: Noah Wedel / Imago)
The Bundesliga basketball clubs received 22 million euros in corona aid last season. The managing director Holz says: “I expect that the Corona aid will not only be extended, but at least increased in accordance with the EU framework.” The situation for the clubs is worsening. “We are very worried,” said Holz, “especially since the solidarity of some sponsors could slowly be used up.”
Not least because of this, he expects more reliability from politics. “Professional sport is always the first to go”, complains Holz, but it must be possible to let in at least a few hundred boosted, 2G-plus-tested viewers with FFP2 masks in order to at least satisfy the sponsors. The game will not be interrupted on its own initiative. In 2020 they made the mistake of starting the season late. “We don’t act on the basis of hopes,” says Holz.
Basketball without a spectator? Also rather bleak.
(Photo: Hanno Bode / Imago)
The Bundesliga clubs suffer up to four million euros in loss of income per game, but so far they have been able to withstand this halfway through relevant TV revenues. In handball, ice hockey and basketball, up to 80 percent of total income is lost without a spectator, and the Corona aid cannot even begin to compensate for that. At their video conference, Bohmann, Tripcke and Holz want to agree to demand that politicians raise the corona aid cover from 1.8 to 2.3 million euros per club. That would be a help.
The league break in January because of the European Championship is just right for handball. But that won’t save a club either. “The problem won’t be resolved in February,” says league boss Bohmann about the Omikron variant. “We have a very, very serious situation,” he said, describing some clubs’ fears about the future. “It will be a huge struggle economically to get everyone through.” Bohmann will also want to talk to his colleagues from basketball and ice hockey about this.