The DFB and UEFA have promised to host the most sustainable European football championship of all time. For this reason, there should be as few car parking spaces as possible at the stadiums. But public transport is not strong enough everywhere.
At the European Football Championship, around 2.7 million visitors are expected to attend the games in the stadiums alone. Up to 12 million people could celebrate and watch football on the fan miles of the ten host cities.
As with previous major sporting events, this means that up to 80 percent of the CO2 emissions caused by the event arise when the fans travel. Even if only a few will arrive from overseas and only a few from other European countries. Around 65 to 70 percent of ticket holders are said to come from Germany.
If the European Football Championship is to be the most sustainable ever, as promised, the majority of fans will have to leave their cars at home. Jens Hilgenberg from the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation demanded last year: “It must be made clear to people: the cheaper, more comfortable and more ecological way is to travel by train.”
In addition to discounted long-distance tickets from Deutsche Bahn and Interrail tickets, EM ticket holders also receive a free 36-hour local transport ticket to every game. And UEFA did not want to offer public parking spaces for fans at half of the stadiums.
There are no car parking spaces for fans at four out of ten stadiums
A request from the Sportschau now shows: In Hamburg, Leipzig, Berlin and Frankfurt, there will actually be no parking spaces for fans at four out of ten stadiums. The parking spaces around the stadiums are then reserved for coaches, police and fire departments, the organizers, the media, stadium visitors with disabilities and UEFA guests.
At all other European Championship stadiums, fans are offered significantly fewer parking spaces in the immediate vicinity than is usual for Bundesliga games. The few parking spaces there must be booked in advance via the Euro2024 app and cost 24 euros. UEFA wants to donate five euros of this to climate protection projects. For comparison: At Hamburger SV, a parking ticket for a second division game costs 9 euros.
Environmental protection experts expressly welcome the fact that traveling by car is becoming less attractive. For the organizers of the European Championship, the sustainability efforts – fewer parking spaces, more long-distance rail transport, fewer cars – also bring with them challenges.
Challenge 1: Capacity in local public transport
“Experience shows that up to 80 percent of guests at European Football Championships use public transport,” says EURO 2024 GmbH, which organizes the tournament for the DFB and UEFA. But a query by Sportschau revealed that only half of the ten host cities in Germany would be able to get 80 percent of ticket holders to or from the stadium by public transport within three hours. Namely Stuttgart, Hamburg, Leipzig, Düsseldorf and Berlin.
Berlin promises not only the largest stadium at the European Championships (71,000 seats), but also the strongest infrastructure: theoretically, 80 percent of the spectators should be able to arrive or depart there by public transport in less than 1.5 hours.
The host cities of Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne and Frankfurt did not want to provide any information about how many fans they can transport to or from the stadium per hour using public transport at maximum capacity. “In individual host cities, the performance of public transport is limited due to the infrastructure,” writes EURO GmbH. In Munich, the city’s public transport system is to be strengthened by an external provider with shuttle buses to the stadium in order to meet demand.
EURO 2024 GmbH writes that it has been decided to offer parking spaces at locations where the public transport infrastructure is limited. Gelsenkirchen plans to allow only 50 percent of spectators to travel by public transport and almost 4,000 of the 14,000 parking spaces that are usual for Bundesliga games should be bookable near the stadium. In Cologne there are almost 3,000, a little more than half of the usual parking space available at the Müngersdorf Stadium.
In Dortmund, 3,000 of around 10,000 parking spaces are made available in the stadium area. The city’s organizers are dependent on being able to motivate a significant proportion of stadium visitors to walk 45 minutes to the stadium if everyone wants to be in the stadium on time for kick-off. A green carpet will show the way as a so-called fan walk.
Challenge 2: Communication with fans
The host cities have to put a lot of effort into ensuring that all fans know whether it is wise to come by car, wait for an S-Bahn or walk to the stadium. Signage, digital guidance systems and volunteers should show the way to pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooter users and drivers.
UEFA is trying to use an app to inform all ticket holders that there is either no parking at their venue or that the spaces must be booked in advance. This information is important so that there is no traffic chaos. In Hamburg there are no public parking spaces available on match days. That’s why police officers are deployed there to deny unauthorized drivers access to the stadium area and to have illegally parked cars towed away.
Frankfurt experienced what can happen when stadium visitors are not well informed at a concert by Helene Fischer in 2018. Back then, fans parked their cars in housing estates and tram routes and even parked them on the side of the A3 because a parking lot next to the motorway was overcrowded. Tour buses also stopped in traffic jams on the highway to let concert goers off.
Recently, Frankfurt has done pioneering work: at a sold-out NFL football game last November, fans had significantly fewer parking spaces available than usual. According to the city, arriving and departing by public transport worked well. During the 2006 World Cup, Berlin managed without any public parking at the stadium and says it worked well then too.
Challenge 3: Keep cars out of cities from the start
In order to meet our own demands in the areas of sustainability and environmental protection and to make do with the few parking spaces at the stadiums, it is important that as many fans as possible use the train on long-distance transport.
But when the first 1.2 million EM tickets were awarded in mid-November, communication was not optimal: the discounted DB and Interrail tickets only came onto the market two months later.
It is difficult for the host cities to rely on enough fans to take advantage of the offers and for the train tickets to actually be in demand. This is shown by the example of Düsseldorf, where, despite all sustainability ambitions, there will be 10,000 parking spaces at the stadium – by far the most compared to the other venues.
And this despite the fact that, in response to Sportschau’s request, the city presents a good public transport connection to the stadium. According to them, buses and trains could bring 80 percent of the spectators to the stadium in just over two hours. However, EURO 2024 GmbH explains: More car journeys are expected in Düsseldorf because the French national team is playing there. The organizers actually wanted to avoid fans from a neighboring country coming by car instead of the train with the reduced Interrail ticket and the offer from Deutsche Bahn.
Euro 2024 wants to be a model for subsequent major sporting events
It will be exciting to see how well the attempt at sustainable transport planning works at the European Championships. After all, the organizers not only want to organize the most climate-friendly European Football Championship of all time, but also want to change something beyond that.
Perhaps there will soon be fewer car parking spaces available for fans in everyday Bundesliga life if it proves successful at the European Championships. And perhaps there will be discounted long-distance train tickets for many sporting events in the future.
