While most German Bundesliga clubs are already playing in new modern arenas, the trend is now slowly trickling down to Germany’s lower leagues. In the last few years, new stadiums have opened in, among others, Ingolstadt, Aachen, Dresden, and Paderborn, and we recently reported on the new stadium of Kickers Offenbach.
Last Saturday, Rot-Weiss Essen was the next to open a new home. Rot-Weiss Essen, German champions in 1955 and a regular guest in the Bundesliga in the 1970s, have in recent years descended to Germany’s semi-professional 4th level, the Regionalliga.
They have, however, built a stadium that would not look out of place in the 2. Bundesliga. Which seems rather optimistic for a club that has only recently returned to the 4th level after having been relegated in 2010 to even more obscure leagues due to financial irregularities.
But mind, Essen is a club that even in its darkest days kept attracting averages of 6,000 spectators per match. It was therefore no wonder that 11,000 people showed up for the low-key opening of a double match of both R-W Essen’s U19 team and SGS Essen’s women’s team (photos). And that Saturday’s Cup match versus Union Berlin has already completely sold out.
The new stadium, which goes by the name of Stadion Essen, is actually for only 75% finished as one of the stands still has to get built. This is because Stadion Essen got built directly adjacent to Essen’s old Georg-Melches-Stadion, which first needs to get demolished before the fourth stand can be built. The complete stadium is expected to be ready in early 2013.
Stadion Essen will than have a capacity of 20,650 places, of which more than half will be in standing areas and 1,100 will be business seats. The places are divided over four separate stands, which means that a future additional 5,000 seats can be created by closing the corners.
Before the opening of the stadium last Saturday, it was also announced that the naming rights of the stadium had been sold to energy company RWE.
RWE is, of course, also the acronym of Rot-Weiss Essen, and while the name RWE Stadion therefore would have made totally sense, the fact that the stadium is owned by the city of Essen, that other clubs will use it as well, and that nobody would recognise RWE as the sponsor anyway, made them decide just to stick with the name Stadion Essen.
Now let’s hope that Stadion Essen can soon witness football in leagues that will do it proper justice.
Photo credits: Rot-Weiss Essen official Facebook page.