UEFA Super Cup: Broadcasters stay home, fans return tickets, Löw speaks out
How many fans will fill the Puskas Arena for tomorrow's showdown between UCL Winners Bayern München and UEL Champions FC Sevilla? A thirty-percent-capacity cap allows for over 20,000. It looks as if that won't be met.
The world waits to see how the first major COVID-Era sports event to allow visiting fans will turn out.
Three German journalistic organizations announced on Wednesday that they would not travel to Budapest to provide live coverage of FC Bayern München's encounter with Sevilla in the UEFA Super Cup. In separate statements, German footballing magazine Kicker, German broadcaster DAZN, and SkySport's German office all announced that they would not send reporters.
The world waits to see how the first major COVID-Era sports event to allow visiting fans will turn out.
Hungary remains classified as a "high risk area" by Germany's Robert Koch Institute. In a statement explaining the decision to refrain from live coverage, a Sky spokesman cited "the shifting situation in Hungary" and stressed the "importance of the health and safety of our employees."
Regarding the Bayern fans planning to travel to the match, Kicker reports that around 800 of the some two thousand supporters who had planned to make the trip have returned their tickets. The approximately 1,200 Bayern fans who evidently still plan to go will not be subjected to any quarantine restrictions and may take advantage of free corona tests at the Munich airport.
Bundestrainer Joachim Löw weighed in on the issue of the Super Cup in an interview with Germany's n-tv. "I basically think it sends the wrong signal that so many spectators are now allowed in a high-risk area," Löw told the German cable news outlet.