I hope nobody minds me getting a bit emotional here for a minute, but August is a very special month for me. The 3rd and 4th of August of 2019 saw Die Finals, a combination of ten German national championships in Olympic summer sports, come into the world after six years of hard work, a fair share of market research and lots of planning. Today Die Finals, my most ambitious project so far, is turning 1 year old.
Just like ESPN created the X Games and the EBU came up with the United European Championships, Die Finals is a child of that interesting trend that has been happening worldwide in recent years where innovative sporting event ideas are being developed by broadcasters and media companies, rather than by sports federations. In our case, I worked with the German broadcasters ARD and ZDF to help them grow the concept of this new event and take care of the media strategy. And today, as Managing Director of Die Finals GmbH, I couldn’t be happier to celebrate its first anniversary. Although, truth be said, these are uncertain times for the world of sports.
With the current pandemic, the second edition of Die Finals scheduled for June 2020 had to be postponed for 2021. However, my Finals team and the broadcasters ARD/ZDF are working relentlessly to finally see the event happen, though the dates are not known yet. In total, 17 national championships in Olympic and Non-Olympic sports are planned; among those, some newcomers like 3×3 basketball, table tennis, taekwondo and rhythmic gymnastics. Exciting, right? To be honest, I can’t wait for the second edition of this huge project to come to life. So stay tuned for upcoming news.