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Several large cities without public viewing for the European Championship
Fans celebrate at a public viewing event in Hanover. Some major cities are holding back on official public viewings this year. photo
© Peter Steffen/German Press Agency GmbH/dpa
In football Germany, public viewing stands for iconic pack watching in packed city center squares. But this time a number of large cities are turning down the topic of a mass European event.
The public viewing was huge, with tens of thousands of spectators in some cases Hype during the 2006 home World Cup, the “summer fairy tale”. What will it be like at the 2024 European Championship? Almost four weeks before the start, it is becoming apparent that although there will be events in the largest cities, many marketplaces are likely to remain empty this time.
Things should be going well again in Berlin: artificial turf was laid and a huge football goal was built for the large fan mile at the Brandenburg Gate. TV stations will repeatedly report on the public viewing there. This year there was also a second fan mile on the lawn in front of the Reichstag. Overall, the organizers are hoping for 50,000 to 100,000 people for both areas on some days.
Floating screens in Munich and Frankfurt
Munich is planning a fan zone in the Olympic Park for 30,000 people for the European Football Championship. They can then watch the games on a 120 square meter screen in the Olympic Lake. During the 2006 World Cup, the big public viewing took place in the Olympic Stadium. “Overall, we are expecting a similar number of people to watch the games,” said a city spokesman. Due to renovation work, no public viewing is planned in the stadium.
In Hamburg, the fan festival starts on June 14th at Heiligengeistfeld. All 51 games are shown live on multiple screens. In addition, on 15 match days the area will be open for the large public viewing, where everyone can celebrate together. All games of the German national team, the five games in the Volksparkstadion and all games in the final round are broadcast on a 100 square meter screen. There are special fan zones and at least one official public viewing area at the four venues in North Rhine-Westphalia – Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Düsseldorf and Cologne. All games that take place in the respective city are shown here, as well as all German games.
A 1.4 kilometer long fan zone with a floating screen will be built on the banks of the Main in Frankfurt; the zone will offer space for 30,000 people.
“The euphoria was different back then”
Elsewhere, major cities are holding back on official public viewing. In Baden-Württemberg, for example, only Stuttgart offers an extensive program. The public viewing on the central palace square has a capacity of around 30,000 people.
Stuttgart already hosted the 2006 World Cup – up to 50,000 people regularly watched the broadcasts on Schlossplatz. However, there are no reports in the other municipalities in the southwest: Freiburg, Karlsruhe Konstanz, Ulm, Mannheim – none of them want to organize a municipal public viewing.
Other major cities that are not yet planning any inner-city public viewing include Nuremberg, Potsdam, Bremen, Duisburg, Essen, Dresden and Chemnitz. There was also a large screen on the cathedral square in Erfurt for the finals of the 2006 World Cup. Now a city spokeswoman says: “The euphoria was different back then.” From mid-June onwards, many fans are likely to be cheering for the German team on the “football beach” in Heringsdorf. At the 2012 European Championships in Poland and Ukraine, the ZDF football beach at the Heringsdorf pier on Usedom was the linchpin of the live reporting. At that time, Katrin Müller-Hohenstein and Oliver Kahn presented here for ZDF and broadcast to the venues from Heringsdorf.