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No uniform level of fan restrictions in the stadium

WA few hours before the Executive Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Federal Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz, together with the Prime Minister of the federal states, announced the measures with which German politics now want to fight the fourth wave of the corona pandemic, Hans-Joachim Watzke had already come out in public agile. As luck would have it, Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA was going to hold the general meeting of BVB shareholders. Watzke spoke there as BVB managing director.

But in today’s sporting political reality, the BVB boss has long been seen as the football official who speaks for all of professional football in Germany. It is only a matter of form that in two weeks’ time Watzke will also receive the official mandate of the German Football League (DFL), in order to then act there as chairman of the supervisory board and deputy spokesman for the DFL executive committee. The BVB managing director, who is politically well-connected, not least in North Rhine-Westphalia, therefore appealed to politicians in advance to “keep things moderate in all seriousness with their Corona measures with a view to the spectators in Bundesliga stadiums – and not give in to populism.” , “In order to possibly distract from one’s own failures”.

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The Bundesliga, said Watzke at the online meeting, is “responsible” and “ready to compromise”. The BVB managing director also announced that he would reduce the number of visitors to the top Bundesliga match against FC Bayern Munich this Saturday (6.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky) from 81,000 to 26,000 due to the high number of infections. But when the political decision was on the table a few hours later, that was not enough in the new Corona reality. Now the following applies: For the time being, only a maximum of 15,000 spectators are allowed to play football.

The federal government and the state leaders agreed that a maximum of 50 percent of the capacity may be used in the stadiums. In sports halls there can be a maximum of 5000 spectators. It is mandatory to wear a mask and the 2G rule, according to which only vaccinated and convalescent people are allowed access. Depending on the location and infection situation, a current corona test may also be requested. In some federal states with particularly high numbers of infections there will be ghost games again, and cancellations are also possible.

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