The neighbor from the state capital sees the withdrawal of United Volleys from the Bundesliga as "a great pity for the volleyball landscape" in Hesse.

But the concern that the VC Wiesbaden with its women's team could fare similarly to the Frankfurt men for financial reasons does not weigh on Christopher Fetting.

The structures are too different for that, says the VCW managing director.

Achim Dreis

sports editor.

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The Frankfurt Volleys, founded in 2015, ultimately remained a project of entrepreneur Jörg Krick, who wanted to offer his son Tobias a high-quality playing opportunity - which was successful, because Krick junior matured into a national player and moved on to more lucrative Italy.

The Volleys achieved sporting successes even without him, such as the cup win in 2021. But that didn’t work either, because no solid financial basis developed after Krick senior’s retirement.

In Wiesbaden, on the other hand, the VCW is very closely intertwined with urban society.

Almost 90 small and medium-sized sponsors, who also have to be "kept happy", as Fetting puts it, are committed to the club, which has been operating first-class for 18 years now and is therefore a reliable figurehead.

And this despite the fact that the club has not won a single title in almost two decades.

With an average of 1560 spectators at home games, the VCW achieved a respectable audience - albeit in pre-Corona times.

In the first season after that, Fetting recorded just 660 stalwarts.

However, as is his habit, he remains "confident even when the situation is difficult".

The last three home games had clearly shown an upward trend with more than a thousand spectators each, after it was only allowed to be 250 at the beginning of the season.

For the coming season, the VCW is planning a budget of 1.4 million euros, which puts the club among the upper average within the Volleyball Bundesliga (VBL), in which men and women are organized.

"Equal pay" is not really an issue - because a special feature of volleyball is that the women's clubs tend to be better off than the men - if you exclude the Berlin Volleys as industry giants.

While the women's division is working on establishing itself as the third strongest European league behind Italy and Turkey with a second master plan, the men have to be careful to get enough teams together for a serious national class.

After Rottenburg, Eltmann and Bühl had withdrawn in recent years and the joint venture between Unterhaching and Innsbruck ended as "Alpenvolleys", only nine teams remained, including Haching as the "rest club" and VC Olympia Berlin as a junior team. National team with no serious chances of competition.

The BR Volleys have won nine of the past ten seasons.

Reversed Signs in Volleyball

On the other hand, there are twelve solid women's teams, three of which - Stuttgart, Dresden and Schwerin - shared the last four titles.

In order to further increase the performance density, a single-track second league is to be formed as a substructure - which would also reduce the performance gap to potential climbers in the medium term.

Of all ball sports, volleyball is also the only one in which women achieve higher ratings than men.

The broadcasts of the men's Bundesliga have migrated to the Internet in the ambitious but negligible category stream content on the Twitch platform and on Sportdeutschland.tv.

In contrast, the women's league games are regularly broadcast on free TV on Sport1 and on pay TV on Sport1extra.

The television presence is also a reason why Fetting remains confident.

In addition, the VCW enjoys an exceptional position in real life as the only established Wiesbaden premier league club in the major sports.

While Eintracht, thanks to their recent successes at European level, gives the other Frankfurt clubs like Skyliners, Löwen and United Volleys little room to breathe, the highest Wiesbaden football club, SV Wehen Wiesbaden, is still fighting for it, at least once to get back into the second division - and finally not to be seen as an immigrant Taunus club anymore.

Reversed signs can also ensure that a calculation works out.