“Want to give the game some dignity”

Union Berlin is one of the few clubs in Europe to oppose the rapid commercialization of football. The media chief of the Irons, Christian Albers, would like to keep it that way in the future.

“It’s not every day we think about how special we are. Because for us, it’s our club. Most of the time we think about how we want to live football ourselves,” Work told the FootballCo Business Podcast.

You have to put yourself in the shoes of the fans and ask yourself, “What should football look like, how should it feel? How should it feel in the stadium?” “We have to have fun. But we look around and everyone says, ‘Wow, they’re so special’. It’s normal business for us.”

For Union Berlin, in a world in which football is increasingly mutating into a commercialization tool, the individual supporter always comes first. “The most important person is the one who comes to the stadium every matchday. We want to give the game a certain dignity and not just use it for a lot of advertising. Football should be the focus of the matchday. We don’t want that to spoil football. “

Nevertheless, the problems arising with the growing awareness would not stop at the iron ones. “When you top the table in one of the biggest football leagues in the world, you attract the attention of other countries,” said Arbeit.

The fans in particular would feel that. “The problem for most people is that they can’t get tickets anymore. In the early ’90s we had our first-team games in front of less than 1,000 spectators in the stadium. For a long time you didn’t have to worry about that.” With the rise of notoriety, “it’s now become a kind of lottery.”