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How does Fortuna Düsseldorf sell out its stadium?

Give away free tickets. That’s the answer on the question ‘How does Fortuna Düsseldorf sell out its stadium’. A new initiative created by the CEO of Fortuna Düsseldorf, Alexander Jobst, to ‘sell out’ the stadium and it is a remarkable gesture to the fans.

The ‘Fortuna For All’ initiative was first announced in the 2022/2023 season. The club’s CEO promised to give away free tickets to every fan who attended certain home games of Fortuna Düsseldorf. The club from the second tier in Germany, Bundesliga 2, included 3 games in the initiative.

Since the start of the ‘Fortuna For all’ initiative, Fortuna Düsseldorf received 120.000 free ticket requests. That is four times the number of tickets available. The remaining tickets are, of course, for the season ticket holders. The tickets were awarded to the fans through a lottery system.

20 to 25 per cent of the fans who will be attending the games will be new fans and that 80 to 85 per cent are expected to be from around the city. The remaining 15 per cent are fans from overseas or the city’s large Japanese population.

The club’s revenue loss from the free tickets will be compensated by extra investments from the club’s biggest commercial partners Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Targobank. The initiative was attractive to the partners because of the social good and the combination of sponsorship and marketing rights. The revenue loss of a matchday, is estimated between €440.000,00 and €500.000,00.

For the partners, sporting success is still the most important. But besides sporting success, the social responsibility aspect is a major driver behind their extra investments. They see a very strong initiative that is also completely new in this business and which so far is not comparable worldwide.

A lot of people are asking if it’s worth the revenue loss to give away free tickets to fans but Jobst was very clear about that: “The value is not the amount of the ticket, the value is the experience of the football match”.

Sources: SportsProMedia