There will be a big anniversary at the home game on Saturday (3.30 p.m.) in the Bundesliga. The 500th stadium booklet of the PROGRAMMierer is published against Leverkusen.
On September 20, 1997, the alliance of Union fans created issue number one for the match against Chemnitz (0:0).
Then as now, Götz Geserick (60) is there. The editor says: “We celebrated the 100th issue with a special edition. We wouldn’t do that anymore. Because the focus should not be on the magazine itself or even us makers, but on the content.”
The magazine (price: 2 euros) usually has 80 pages. The core sections guest performance, game review, club news including youngsters and women, statistics and “It was then” have been around for almost 26 years.
The foreword page is made available to the association. The club provides the list of members’ birthdays and the player interview. Otherwise the PROGRAMMERS are self-sufficient. Geserick: “Since Union has never tried to influence the content, I would classify the degree of independence from the club as 100 percent.”
The stadium program for a single game is part of the endangered football culture.
Nine Bundesliga clubs (Dortmund, Munich, Leipzig, Wolfsburg, Cologne, Bremen, Hoffenheim, Schalke, Hertha) no longer print at all. Four clubs (Leverkusen, Mainz, Frankfurt, Bochum) limit themselves to thin A6 leaflets. In addition to Union, bound editions are only available in Freiburg, Gladbach, Augsburg and Stuttgart.
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For the Unioner and the printing company vierC, the triple workload of the professionals (league, cup & Europa League) meant a lot of extra work. However, there is no end in sight for the cult magazine.
Geserick: “Because there hasn’t been any real reason to stop until now. We continue to enjoy making the booklet and the interested reader apparently also enjoys reading it.”
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