This weekend, for the first time in Corona times, masses of fans will be pouring into the stadiums again - to the great relief of the Bundesliga clubs.

Because the pandemic has cost the Bundesliga more than one billion euros in sales.

The German Football League gave this figure for the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 seasons in its 2022 economic report on Friday. The 36 professional clubs must of course expect further negative figures in the current season.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented caesura.

The time when growth was almost taken for granted seems to be over," said the new DFL boss Donata Hopfen.

"Without a doubt, this will have a massive impact on our development over the next few years."

Since most matches without fans had to take place in the stadiums, the gaming revenue of the Bundesliga alone, which mainly comes from ticket income, fell by around 95 percent compared to the last pre-pandemic season: in 2018/19 it was around 650 million euros – only 35.5 million euros last season.

Total club revenue has fallen to €4.05 billion in 2020/21.

It is already clear that in the current round the income from the exploitation of the German-language media rights and the proceeds from international marketing will be below those of the previous year.

It is not foreseeable what economic consequences the war in Ukraine will have for professional football.

“We need to find new ways”

Great challenges always offer great opportunities, Hopfen emphasized.

"It is important to find new ways of making German professional football economically future-proof - along our traditions and values.

We will tackle these issues together with all the clubs," said the 46-year-old successor to Christian Seifert at the umbrella organization of the professional clubs.

The fact that the crisis has also hit healthy clubs like Eintracht Frankfurt was made clear on Friday by board spokesman Axel Hellmann.

“We were bursting with economic strength before Corona.

Now, as of June 30, 2022, we will report an operating loss of over EUR 70 million over three seasons,” Hellmann told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

This means that equity in the Europa League quarter-finalists will shrink to between seven and twelve million euros, depending on the course of the season.

In the case of cup winner Borussia Dortmund, who sold all 81,365 tickets for the chasing duel on Saturday (6.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky) against RB Leipzig, managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke described the financial losses in the "Funke Mediengruppe". Pandemic like this: “We have already lost so many millions, more than 120 in total.”

The DFL pointed out that the games without fans also had an impact on those directly and indirectly involved in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2.

This number of people has temporarily fallen by around 50 percent to 26,183.

Those most affected are those indirectly employed in the areas of security and catering who work in the stadiums: their deployment has been reduced by around 80 percent.