Denmark club’s ‘500 only’ fan formula

Article posted by Coliseum, June 15^th, 2020

Image: FC Copenhagen

Danish top-tier Superliga football club FC Copenhagen has chalked out plans to welcome 10,500 fans to its residence – the 38,065-capacity ground Telia Parken in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Telia Parken, also known as Parken Stadium, is a football stadium in the Indre Østerbro district of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Denmark is slowly reopening following closures due to the global spread of fatal COVID-19. Nevertheless, the Scandinavian country has a restriction on gatherings of up to 500 people.

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The club has decided to find a way around by creating 21 sections of up to 500 supporters throughout the stadium. It is currently waiting for the plan to be greenlighted. They will create cubicles of 500 fans each, the maximum allowed.

Roboticket – the ticketing partner of FC Copenhagen – is helping the club in its plan to host 10,500 fans, which would account for up to 27 percent of the ground’s capacity, and would lead to approximately every fourth seat being occupied.

Telia Parken allows each floor to have its own dedicated entrance, toilet facilities and food and drink stalls.

Lars Bo Jeppesen, Director and Chief Executive of Parken Sport and Entertainment, noted, “If this succeeds, then it is a unique opportunity for us and Danish football to take a big step out of a serious crisis and help the entire ecosystem under the FCK and the Super League.”

“We understand that it may cause some people to be disappointed not to get a seat, but we will go for a combination of fans and partners at the stadium. How the distribution will be, we do not know yet, but one thing is certain, and it is that nobody gets the right to an empty seat. It must be understood in the way that you have to announce whether you are coming or not, so that we ensure full utilization of the seats,” he added.

The world of football is trying to return to normality. Stadiums are trying to bring back fans to the stands bit by bit, something which is very hard to conceive in a COVID-19 world.

“With this plan we follow the expected numerical rules and take the necessary measures with respect to our guests from the moment they arrive at the place. There are many more details in the plan, the park, the distance, the cleanliness and the information. It will be a new signature of going to football, but the Danes have shown that they can handle it very well,” Jeppesen added.

If the whole arrangement is given the green light, it would allow supporters to attend Superliga games in the Danish capital with separate entrances and coordinated arrival times reducing the risk of coronavirus infection.

The revised capacity of 10,500 is just over a quarter of what the stadium could hold in normal circumstances.

‘Zoom Wall’

As professional football returned to Denmark on May 28, soccer-crazy fans utilized the tool Zoom to be a part of the action.

Thousands of fans logged into the video-conferencing software and were transported into the Ceres Park Stadium in Aarhus, Denmark, for a league game between professional sports club AGF Aarhus and professional football club Randers that heralded the resumption of the country’s pandemic-affected season.

Though the venue was sans fans, the faces of thousands of supporters who joined the Zoom call were shown on giant screens along one side of the field.

Ahead of the game, Aarhus termed the ‘Zoom wall’ as the world’s first “virtual grandstand”.

Crowd noise was piped in for the match and cardboard ‘spectators’ were placed in the stands.

The Danish Superliga was suspended in March due to the global outbreak of coronavirus.

The Danish Superliga is the current Danish football championship tournament, and administered by the Danish Football Association. It is the highest football league in Denmark.

Sell-out

Another Superliga club, Aalborg BK, saw strong demand for fans to return after its 250 home tickets got sold like hot cakes recently.

Aalborg BK is a professional football team located in Aalborg, Denmark. The club is represented in the Danish Superliga and has won four Danish football Championships and three Danish Cup trophies.

Danish professional football club Vejle Boldklub has become the first football club in the country to welcome fans back into its stadium.

Vejle, which currently sits on top of the heap in the second tier of Danish football, gave entry to 500 fans recently in its match against Danish football club Skive IK. Vejle, which lost the match 2-1.

Few tickets were offered to commercial partners who had helped the club sail through the COVID-19 crisis, with the remainder being issued to season ticket holders through a lottery process.

Vejle Stadium can sit a little over 10,000 spectators and Director Henrik Tønder has opined that for forthcoming matches the club can split the stadium into sections of 500 seated fans, up to a capacity of 3,000 for the final games of the 2019-20 seasons.

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