MainArena
The MainArena , officially known as the FIFA Fan Fest Frankfurt , was a public viewing area on the Museumsufer in Frankfurt am Main during the 2006 World Cup from June 9th to July 9th, 2006. The staging of the SkyArena .
Structure and position
The MainArena was designed for a capacity of 30,000 spectators, of which 15,000 in the Public Viewing North on the north bank, 7,000 in the Public Viewing South on the south bank reserved for sponsors, and a further 8,000 in the Public Viewing East at the Weseler Werft . The number of seats was 3200.
For security reasons, access to the MainArena had to be restricted several times. The actual attendance record was 80,000 people who found their place on the streets and bridges in and around the arena on June 21st for the game between the Netherlands and Argentina and on June 24th for Germany against Sweden . By the end of the World Cup, around two million spectators had visited the MainArena.
The football matches were broadcast on three video walls. The two larger, 144 square meters each, were located on a 9 meter high and 16 meter wide cuboid that was installed in the middle of the Main on 22 meter long hydraulic stilts. The video wall was composed of almost 1,100 individual screen parts and was designed for 22,000 spectators in the North and South Public Viewing. For the east area, a third umbrella with an area of 72 square meters was also installed at the Weseler shipyard.
The areas for the Main were put together in the Osthafen and then shipped to their actual location at Main-km 35.83 between the Old Bridge and the Ignatz-Bubis Bridge . Both banks of the Main could be used as public viewing areas during the World Cup games . The artificial island came from Rotterdam and was manufactured there by one of the World Cup sponsors, the Dutch technology group Philips . It weighed 350 tons with screens and all cables . As a result, the four pillars sank into the river sediment by up to six meters during the World Cup.
The security measures caused considerable effort. For example, around 2,100 volunteer and full-time firefighters were on duty every match day.
The MainArena cost around 7.4 million euros in the four weeks of its operation, of which around 6.4 million were raised by the city of Frankfurt. The sponsors contributed about a million. The allocated budget of 8.2 million euros did not need to be exhausted.
The MainArena is rated as a great success by those responsible.
Shipping
The shipping traffic had to accept restrictions for the MainArena. Between May 26, 2006 and July 19, 2006 there was a ban on meeting and overtaking for commercial shipping between Main km 35.2 and 36.3, as well as a ban on lying on both banks. Separate fairways were set up for both recreational and commercial shipping . Apart from these restrictions, the shipping remained in operation the entire time, so that inland vessels occasionally passed in front of the screen during the broadcasts.
Despite the safety measures, there were several accidents. On June 29, 2006 at around 1 a.m., despite the traffic regulations, a Dutch barge rammed the MainArena and damaged one of the four pillars of the screen cuboid. The skipper had driven through a locked arch of the bridge. However, the damage was minor and could be repaired during the night. Additional collision occurred on the night of July 4, 2006. This time, collided, a 170 meter long pushed convoy on its way from Linz to Antwerp with the video wall, due to a steering error of the 64-year-old German captain. There was a little damage to the outer paneling of the screen, but this did not endanger the broadcast of the semi-final match between Germany and Italy in the evening.
Supporting program
The MainArena was also used for events on days when there was no World Cup match. On June 29th, the Frankfurt Opera together with the Tourismus + Congress GmbH presented an opera night in which the opera Die Entführung aus dem Seragl by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was performed as a recording of a production from 2003. A film night with many classics followed on July 2nd, and on July 7th, as part of the Museumsuferfest, a live program of the hr3 took place on the main stage in the North Public Viewing area. Among others, Kate Ryan and the Hermes House Band were there .
Web links
- For the 2006 World Cup, Frankfurt's MainArena will bring football to the heart of the city
- Images on flickr
Media coverage
- MainArena on hr3
- SkyArena and MainArena are to advertise the soccer World Cup on rhein-main.net
- MainArena so far full of success ( memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on sport.ard.de
- Late revenge of the Dutch?
- The Main Arena should be there more often
- Frankfurt's fan festival is broken down into individual parts
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 30 ″ N , 8 ° 41 ′ 23 ″ E