Frankfurt’s Deutsche Bank Park stadium is entering the final decade of its lifecycle and plans for a new venue should be made as a matter of urgency, Eintracht Frankfurt board member Axel Hellmann believes.
Kicker said that given the often lengthy lead times for major infrastructure projects in Germany, the club’s chief executive said the stadium question is “the decisive project for the future over the next 10 years”.
Hellmann said, “If we don’t start planning a stadium now, we won’t have a new stadium in 10 years.
“Stadiums normally have a life cycle of three decades. The stadium we play in now opened in 2005. In effect, its expiry date would be 2035.”
Eintracht Frankfurt e.V. is a German professional sports club based in Frankfurt, Hesse (Germany). It is best known for its football club, which was founded on March 8th, 1899. The club currently plays in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system.
The Waldstadion, currently known as Deutsche Bank Park for sponsorship purposes, is a retractable roof sports stadium in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. It is the home of Eintracht Frankfurt.
Situated in the Frankfurt City Forest, the venue has undergone numerous redevelopments over the past century and hosted matches for major international tournaments including the 1974 and 2006 World Cups, Euro 1988, and Euro 2024.
A recent expansion completed ahead of the 2023/24 season added 11,000 safe standing places to the north-west stand, lifting total matchday capacity to 60,100.
Stadium expansion plans considered
Earlier this year Eintracht Frankfurt commissioned a feasibility study to look into options for expanding Deutsche Bank Park to an 80,000 capacity stadium.
Two architectural options are currently under consideration: maintaining the current structural shell while adding a massive third tier or completely demolishing and rebuilding the venue stand-by-stand on the existing site.
Regardless of the stadium’s size or construction timetable, Hellmann is clear about its purpose.
He said, “The central element of the stadium will obviously be Eintracht Frankfurt’s home ground, with a higher standing capacity than today.
“But it will also be a concert arena and an event venue, because that is what Frankfurt’s location demands.”
In terms of overall attendance and events, Hellmann described the stadium, built for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, as the “eighth most successful stadium in the world”.
According to him, only six stadiums in the United States and Wembley Stadium in London rank ahead of it.
The planning process for the expansion or rebuild is expected to become more concrete soon.
Hellmann said, “These are the two basic options. We will present the initial plans to the city at the end of the year and then to the public towards the end of the first quarter of 2027. Only then will the real work begin.
“If we start planning now, we will have a new stadium in 2035, 2036 or 2037,” Hellmann said.
How quickly the major project will progress remains to be seen. Frankfurt already has a cautionary example of the difficulties facing major infrastructure developments, without needing to look as far as Berlin’s airport or Stuttgart’s railway station.
The city’s P9 stadium car park is earmarked for a multi-purpose arena next to the football stadium.
The new venue is intended, among other uses, to accommodate the professional teams of Frankfurt’s ice hockey and basketball clubs, with completion targeted for the end of 2030. However, even after a number of years of planning, construction has yet to begin.
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