06.09.2016, 02:40
LANXESS arena among the world’s best

NEWS REPORT: Home of the VELUX EHF FINAL4 is one of the most visited arenas so far in 2016

LANXESS arena among the world’s best

Thanks to nearly 900,000 visitors at 89 big events in the first half year of 2016, Cologne’s LANXESS arena was not only the most-visited multi-purpose arena in Germany, but was ranked fifth globally in the “2016 Midyear Worldwide Ticket Sales Top 200 Arena Venues“ by magazine “Pollstar”.

For this ranking, only the audiences of show events (437,667) were evaluated. Including top sport events such as the VELUX EHF FINAL4, exactly 888,217 visitors had passed through the doors of Germany’s biggest multi-purpose arena from January to July 2016.

19,750 fans on each of the two match days had guaranteed a sold-out VELUX EHF FINAL4 again - and all of them experienced perhaps the most thrilling VELUX EHF Champions League final in history, when Vive Tauron Kielce beat Veszprem after extra time and penalty shootout. “No one ever dared to believe that Kielce would be able to catch up this eight-goal deficit and finally raise the trophy. It was an incredible match, which is already handball history,” said Stefan Löcher, director of the LANXESS Arena.

The 2017 edition is already on its way to becoming another sell-out. Besides the pinnacle event of European club handball, the home matches of the hockey team Kölner Haie also attract full arenas. “These exclusive show and sport events are true magnets for tourism in Cologne,” Löcher underlines the number of 450,000 hotel nights by arena visitors annually.

The first three spots in the “Pollstar” ranking are taken by the British or French arenas: Number 1 is the O2 London, followed by AccorHotels Arena in Paris and Manchester Arena.

TEXT: Björn Pazen / cor