Fan radio
A fan radio is a (mostly voluntary) sports report, which is usually carried out as an internet radio . It usually belongs to a certain club and is run by it, its fans or sponsors .
A fan radio usually reports live from the club team's matches. The commentators who report on a game event as part of a fan radio broadcast are usually lay people and themselves members of the respective club or its fan scene. There is reporting "by fans for fans".
Fan radios in football
Germany
- situation
In recent years, many fan radios have emerged, especially in football. In the German soccer league system, sports coverage on public radio is patchy up to around the third Bundesliga. Fan radios try to close this reporting gap and provide the fans of their club with adequate and up-to-date information on matches. Although there is extensive reporting in the first and second football league, many fans appreciate the broadcasts of the club's own fan radios, as these are often perceived as more natural and emotional. Broadcasting rights have also often been sold to commercial pay-TV providers. However, many fans refuse to conclude paid contracts with the providers and therefore resort to fan radios.
- Legal and Licensing
Operating a fan radio in Germany is subject to conditions. Since the broadcasting rights in professional football - also for broadcast-like broadcasts - are usually sold to public or private broadcasters, only official club radios are allowed to report live. This is tolerated as long as the program is only made available in the form of an internet radio and only on the club's own homepage. Distribution via third-party providers who provide the program on public platforms violates license rights. From the third division onwards, these regulations are somewhat relaxed. Fan radios are allowed to report here even if the operator is not a league club.
Austria
Even in the top Austrian league , the number of viewers for television broadcasts has continued to decline since the granting of broadcasting rights to pay stations such as Sky Austria . Nevertheless, no club here operates a comparable radio format. Instead, the clubs often make podcasts available to fans that contain exclusive audio material from interviews, press conferences or preliminary reports.
Switzerland
Some clubs in the Swiss Super League operate their own fan radios. These offer the advantage that reporting can be in the regionally preferred official language. While the Young Boys Bern come from the largely German-speaking canton of Bern , for example , the Ticino FC Lugano plays its home games in front of an Italian-speaking crowd.
| Club name | Station name | League affiliation |
|---|---|---|
| FC Basel | FCB Live Radio | Super League |
| FC Luzern | FCL.Radio | Super League |
| FC Sion | FC Sion Radio | Super League |
| FC St. Gallen | FCSG.FM | Super League |
| FC Thun | Radio blind power | Super League |
| FC Zurich | Züri Live | Super League |
| Young Boys Bern | Radio yellow-black | Super League |
International
- United Kingdom
In the UK, some football clubs have been offering community radios for live broadcasts, press conferences and similar events since the early 1990s. These often differ from German fan radios in the professionalism of the commentators, the analogue reception, as well as strict licensing requirements that only allow broadcasting in the immediate vicinity of the stadium and only for a very limited period of time. In addition, some club websites also make digital web radios available to fans, which can be received online for free after free registration.
- Netherlands
The Boerenmacht fan club of FC Groningen operates FCG Radio, the only fan radio of a club in the Dutch Eredivisie . In addition to the live match reports, it also uploads its own podcasts and columns to the fan club's website at regular intervals - without being in any way connected to the club's managers.
- Spain
The major Spanish football clubs of the Primera División usually provide fan radio-like formats for every sporting event of their first team free of charge in order to enable fans and interested parties to receive live reporting. A special feature here is the website of FC Barcelona , which the club's own Radio Barça offers not only in the national language Spanish , but also in Catalan and English , in order to serve the increasingly international audience.
Fan radios in ice hockey
Especially in Germany there are many fan radios among the teams of the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) and DEL2 . Between 2000 and 2010, numerous web radios operated by clubs and fan associations as well as local broadcasters were created within these two leagues to enable fans to receive live coverage - especially on away games. During this time, public interest in the sport in German-speaking countries was rather low compared to professional football, which is why ice hockey matches were rarely broadcast on the radio or on free-to-air television channels. Since the inclusion of the DEL games in Magenta Sport's free programming in 2019, the number of listeners has rapidly declined, which has led to the closure of some fan radios.
| Club name | Station name | League affiliation |
|---|---|---|
| Krefeld penguins | Radio Ice Age | DEL |
| Adler Mannheim | Radio rainbow | DEL |
| Polar bears Berlin | Polar Bears L! Ve | DEL |
| Fish town penguins | fish townlive | DEL |
| Düsseldorfer EG | 1935 radio | DEL |
| EHC Red Bull Munich | Radio Oberwiesenfeld | DEL |
| Nuremberg Ice Tigers | N1 Ice Tiger fan radio | DEL |
| Straubing Tigers | Fan radio | DEL |
| Kassel Huskies | Radio HNA | DEL2 |
Individual evidence
- ↑ Conference review: Fan radios in Germany unite. November 16, 2011, accessed January 29, 2017 .
- ↑ Florian Vetter: Bundesliga TV contract - winners and losers. Der Standard , March 29, 2019, accessed December 6, 2019 .
- ↑ Florian Vetter: Bundesliga: The ball rolls on TV and nobody is watching. Der Standard , February 27, 2019, accessed December 6, 2019 .
- ↑ Heinz Deutsch: The Podcast. Retrieved December 6, 2019 .
- ^ Andrew Baker: Almanack: United win in the air. The Independent , October 9, 1994, accessed December 6, 2019 .
- ↑ Dietmar Telser: A city in football fever. Der Spiegel , May 5, 2003, accessed December 6, 2019 .
- ^ Carole Fleming: The Radio Handbook . 2nd Edition. Routledge , London, New York 2002, ISBN 0-415-22615-5 , pp. 35-36 .
- ↑ Live Audio Commentary - Registration. September 2009, accessed December 6, 2019 .
- Jump up ↑ Veel gestelde. Retrieved December 7, 2019 (Dutch).
- ^ Radio Barça. Retrieved December 10, 2019 (Spanish).
- ↑ Dennis Wegner: Haimspiel.de stops Liveradio after the season. In: Haimspiel.de. January 20, 2019, accessed June 28, 2020 .