Fortuna Düsseldorf announce free games but partner drops out

Fortuna Düsseldorf made headlines across the world in April when they announced a revolutionary new approach to ticketing: letting all fans in for free.

This week, the Bundesliga 2 club revealed the three home games next season which will make up the pilot phase of the "Fortuna For All" initiative, starting with the visit of Kaiserslautern on October 21.

This will be followed later in the season by the home games against Hamburg side St. Pauli at the end of January and Eintracht Braunschweig in April, the exact dates of which are yet to be confirmed.

In selecting the fixtures, Fortuna say they based their decisions on three criteria: attractive, traditional opponents to guarantee a good atmosphere, leaving enough time between each game to gather feedback and make improvements, and ensuring that the matches were evenly spread across the season.

Fortuna sponsor drops out

Fortuna aim to offset lost ticket sales — which account on average for around 15% of clubs' total revenues in Bundesliga 2 — with €45m ($49.8m) of additional investment over the next five years from a group of major local business sponsors.

However, the initiative has already suffered a minor setback after one of those leading sponsors, Düsseldorf-based insurance group Provinzial, dropped out of the project before it has even started.

According to local newspaper Rheinische Post (RP), the move follows a disagreement over the use of fans' personal data, which the insurer had reportedly hoped to access in exchange for their financial support.

Indeed, one major concern raised by critics had been how the new sponsors stand to benefit from their engagement in "Fortuna For All" beyond mere publicity, and whether this could involve access to valuable personal data for marketing purposes.

Fortuna chairman Alexander Jobst had already assured fans via an interview with the RP that "all data will remain in the club's hands."

While his comments had actually referred to another sponsor, IT giants Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), who will contribute a new online ticketing and data-processing platform as part of the project, it appears that Provinzial had also harbored hopes of accessing data.

The precise contents of the contracts are not known, but Fortuna and Provinzial told the RP that they had "decided to adjust the nature and extent of their cooperation."

According to a statement, the insurer will remain a regular club sponsor, as they were before, but will be withdrawing from their additional involvement with "Fortuna For All" due to "differing perceptions of the arrangements of the concept."

'Fortuna For All' not affected

Having been set to contribute only around €5m ($5.56m) to the initiative, Provinzial had been the smallest of the new sponsors behind HPE and Targobank, with the latter having also replaced chemicals and consumer goods company Henkel as kit sponsor.

Fortuna Düsseldorf insist that the insurance group's withdrawal will not affect "Fortuna For All" and that the club is already in advanced discussions with potential new sponsors, the names of which they are "confident of being able to name soon."

As the project continues, Fortuna hope to expand the number of free matches per season beyond just three, and eventually to all 17 home games in a future season.

Fortuna Düsseldorf finished fourth in Bundesliga 2 last season, eight points of adrift of Hamburg in the promotion playoff spot. They last competed in the Bundesliga in the 2019/20 season.