Bundesliga – football and alcohol: high addiction print in the stadium

Michael Krause has had a season ticket at FC St. Pauli for more than forty years. He has experienced ascents and descents, hundreds of goals and hundreds of disappointments. But he cannot remember many games. He was simply too drunk.

He regularly sacked in a pub. Some of his friends described him as a “vodka star seal machine” because he drank so much. Ultimately, they turned away from him and hardly recognized him again. His health deteriorated. Alcohol almost cost him his life.

Michael Krause tells his story on a warm summer evening in the North German city of Oldenburg, where football fans gathered to form a cultural festival. He stands with other discussants on a stand of the local stadium and looks up into the audience. He speaks precisely, open, critical. You quickly notice that he wants to stimulate others to think. Especially in football.

There are few places where alcohol consumption is as well accepted as in the stadium. Almost every club in the first three leagues has a beer partner among its sponsors. Now that the Bundesliga also takes up its business this weekend, a lucrative time begins for them. In several stadiums, sellers tap the beer directly on the square with backpack containers. Children and adolescents are often surrounded by drunks.

“We do not demand that you prohibit beer in the stadium,” says Michael Krause. “But we advocate that fans critically question their alcohol consumption.” He could only get through it late. Went into therapy and has been dry for 18 years.

Return to the stadium as a abstinence

Krause didn’t want to take FC St. Pauli. But he was skeptical when he went back to the stadium after the withdrawal. Everywhere he saw beer advertising and roaring fans. He found rescue at the “White-brown coffee drinkers” – A network of dry St. Pauli fans, which was founded in 1996 by two therapy patients.

“It is a wonderful feeling to go to the stadium and not to be alone,” he says. The “white-brown coffee drinkers” follow the home games together, and they also meet in their free time. Often they don’t talk about their earlier alcohol addiction, but sometimes. For example, if you organize information events or visit “detoxification stations” in which dependentes are looked after.

Marion Albers knows these moments of temptation. She has been dry for five years and regularly accompanies fans back to the stadium after withdrawing. Sometimes it happens, says the member of the “white-brown coffee drinkers” that these fans in the beer environment then feel an “addiction pressure” and want to leave the grandstand again. “Then we withdraw and talk about it,” she says. “Since many of us have had similar experiences in the fan club, we can put ourselves in a position.”

The “white-brown coffee drinkers” are established as a self-help group. The other day, says Albers, she received the call of a mother who looks at the alcohol consumption of her 18-year-old son. Another time, a group in which a young fan was drunk and would “escalate”. Albers takes time for such conversations, hoping that followers do not get into dependency.

Alcohol is socially accepted, is often hardly perceived as a drug. In Germany, around 15,000 people die from the consequences of their alcohol consumption every year. 1.6 million people are dependent. Although the number is so high, the political and civil society initiatives against the alcohol industry have encountered resistance for decades. And the billion -dollar professional football is a symbol.

FC St. Pauli closed a partnership with a whiskey manufacturer from the USA in 2019. In a message, club president Oke Göttlich was cited in the following words: “This cooperation testifies to great trust in the club and shows that FC St. Pauli is also an attractive and reliable partner for international brands.” The club was delegated in Tennessee.

Marion Albers and Michael Krause were stunned and are still today. In 2019, the “white-brown coffee drinkers” distributed leaflets for the first time against the offensive advertising of alcoholic beverages in the stadium. They were insulted by fans and mocked as a spoiler, but they also received encouragement and donations. A punk band dedicated a song to them.

Soon afterwards they got involved in the membership meetings of the association. In applications, they called for the introduction of non -alcoholic beverage stands and the ban on mobile sellers. First, their concerns were rejected. Also on the grounds that you could not do without income during the Covid pandemic.

But the “white-brown coffee drinkers” remained stubborn and were able to achieve a remarkable success: the association has passed a prevention concept. There are now sales stands without a beer bar in the stadium, the coaches in the offspring are sensitized and the club wants to “critically question availability, advertising and image of alcohol in the future.”

It shows whether a paradigm shift develops from this. But for the first time, a professional club officially recognized that alcohol in football can be a problem. Other clubs observe the project of St. Pauli with interest – some with skepticism, others with the silent hope that something could move too.

Connections to the beer industry

But reality often catches up with the idealists. In Germany, breweries spend almost half a billion euros on advertising every year. Many spots and ads depict young adults who are supposed to convey a positive attitude to life and hold a beer bottle in their hands. Such motifs during the world or European championships are particularly present. At times, a brewery was even a partner of the public “sports show”.

A television documentary from Westdeutscher Rundfunk worked out the connections between football and beer industry in 2022. And she documented the advances against their influence: In 2008, the then drug commissioner of the Federal Government, Sabine Bätzing, campaigned against advertising in sports. In 2022, numerous EU MPs came up with a similar initiative. In both cases, football clubs and beer sponsors struck back. They referred to jobs in their companies and the popularity of beer.

And so you can still hear the loudest criticism at the base, far from the club structures. In the recent past, fans living in other cities have also come together. There is, for example, “soberly, more of the game” at 1. FC Union Berlin. Or “clear ship” at Hamburger SV. In Kaiserslautern, the long-time FCK fan Jens Neufeld, who has been dry for twelve years, is looking for a possible new fan club. The planned name: “Coffee Devils”.

This step of the foundation has »Schalke Null Bier« already behind in Gelsenkirchen. The initiator Katharina Strohmeyer had to experience in her youth how family members died of her alcohol addiction, her grandfather of cirrhosis of the liver, when she was 14.

Katharina Strohmeyer declined alcohol for a long time. But during her puberty she also wanted to feel belonging, in the handball club, in the political youth organization. “I didn’t find anyone who was somehow cool but didn’t drank,” she says. So alcohol was now part of her life, especially with her favorite club in football.

The stadium of FC Schalke 04 is named after a beer brand and has one of the longest tap systems in the world. Around 30,000 liters are sold in a home game. “We don’t want to take the beer away,” says Katharina Strohmeyer. “But we want to watch football in an environment in which you can drink if you want but don’t have to.” Again and again it happens that it is due to twenty minutes for water in the stadium while the beer is available much faster.

Katharina Strohmeyer and the other members of “Schalke zero beer” meet regularly. Soon you want to offer a hotline that fans can contact with an addiction problem. Your commitment now speaks around. The other day she was asked by a television editorial office whether she would test non -alcoholic beer for a program. She declined. “If people had an addiction problem, non -alcoholic beer can also lead to a relapse,” says Strohmeyer. “Because the taste and smell can arouse memories of earlier.”

Many football clubs still lack background knowledge. This is also why the “white-brown coffee drinkers” invited all abstinent fan clubs to Hamburg in June. There they also talked about other addiction diseases, drugs, gambling addiction or drug abuse. And they looked at other countries: to France, where alcohol advertising is prohibited in sports. Or to England, where beer consumption in the stands is prohibited.

Despite the efforts at St. Pauli to pay more attention to the addiction, there was a setback last season before the home game against Leverkusen: the beer sponsor of FC St. Pauli distributed a new mixed drink with 2.5 percent alcohol in front of the stadium. “It was irresponsible and leads the prevention concept ad absurdum,” says Michael Krause.

It has been dry for almost 20 years. Gone are the days when he was sacked in pubs and could no longer remember the games. The “white-brown coffee drinkers” showed him that passion for football doesn’t need alcohol. His team’s gates can still put him in a intoxication.