A campfire in crisis? The German national football team during the pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily affected a wide range of stakeholders in the sport sector. Yet, some professional sports managed to gain exceptions from the restrictive anti-COVID-19 policies. The current paper assumes that the effects could have been ambiguous. On the one hand, professional sports could have benefitted from its position as provider of live TV events. On the other hand, the exceptions for professional sports could have stirred the anger of a frustrated public. We explore these questions by examining two unique dataset on TV ratings for and identification with the German men’s national team during the EURO 2020. We find that the national football team, which has been depicted as last national ‘campfire’, has been a relative loser in terms of viewership, which might, however, also reflect the team’s long-term decline. We find also that approval of a special treatment for professional football has been linked to higher team identification.