Who is the favorite sports star among Germans?

Interesting article, you can find the answer

Not Ballack, not Crozier, but Dirk Nowitzki

Sohu Sports News: In a coffee shop in Hamburg, Germany, young Dennis Meinecke stood at the counter and chatted animatedly with an American customer. What they were talking about was not the ongoing World Cup, but the NBA playoffs between the Mavericks and the Heat. . Meinecke himself also plays basketball. Before Nowitzki joined the NBA, a German boy like him would have chosen football without hesitation.

In the minds of 82 million Germans, Nowitzki is an undisputed national hero, and they know everything about the All-Star forward. But when it comes to basketball itself, few Germans are as interested as Meineke. Even basketball fans like Menecke didn't have the opportunity to watch the NBA Finals live because the game between the Mavericks and the Heat was only broadcast on premium channels.

This year’s NBA Finals coincides with the World Cup. As the host, the Germans naturally have no time to attend to a basketball game on another continent. However, Nowitzki's status in his home country is still lofty, even surpassing that of many football stars. Meinecke said: "Not many people here like to watch basketball games, but everyone loves Dirk."

The Germans have a conflicting love for Nowitzki, a bit like Lance Armstrong in The situation in the United States is that every American is proud of the seven-time "Tour de France King", but most Americans can't count other cycling stars besides Armstrong. Meinecke himself plays in the German D-level basketball league and has a natural understanding of basketball. He especially appreciates Nowitzki's dedicated behavior of going to Hamburg every June to serve as an ambassador for the streetball game.

Football will always be the number one sport for Germans, and other sports cannot attract many participants, even basketball, which is second only to football in popularity. Basketball in Germany is regarded as a "small event" like ice hockey, cycling, hockey, track and field and handball. It was only after Nowitzki became famous that the German media occasionally reported NBA scores.

The few basketball fans in Germany are mostly concentrated in international metropolises, such as Frankfurt, which is the international distribution center of American Airlines. Gerard Sieg, who works in a hotel in Frankfurt, said: "Only people in big cities know a little bit about basketball. Those Germans living in small towns may not even know the basic rules of basketball. Of course, now there are more More and more young people are becoming interested in basketball."

Ziege looked tired. He said it was all because of watching the World Cup. What is certain is that the Germans will never go to the biennial Men's Basketball European Championship with the energy to watch the World Cup, even though the German men's basketball team was the runner-up in last year's European Championship. In the German Basketball League, many teams don't even have a decent arena, because basketball's status here is similar to football's status in the United States.

Uwe Hesse, who works for "Bild" with a circulation of 3.8 million, which is the largest newspaper in Europe, said: "Most Germans have a different opinion of players in the German basketball league. They don’t know anything, they only know about Dirk. The Germans are not concerned about basketball itself, they don’t care about basketball at all.”

German TV stations began to broadcast NBA in the late 1990s. game, shortly after that the German broadcast rights of the NBA were acquired by a pay channel, which had a fatal impact on the popularity of the NBA in Germany. Meinecke said: "This is a shame for German public television. Dirk played so well, but few Germans could see it. We can only go to the NBA website to see the scores and technical statistics."

The time difference between the United States and Germany is also a very specific issue. The start time of NBA games happens to be midnight in Germany. Yesterday’s third finals game started at 3 a.m. local time in Germany. The media's indifference has not helped the popularity of basketball in Germany. Heise said that "Bild" reserved the first eight pages for the World Cup, and only covered the NBA Finals on the ninth page.

It is not easy for Nowitzki to become one of the favorite sports stars in Germany in a "basketball desert". Max Borgmann of the German News Agency believes that Nowitzki's popularity is To a large extent, it has nothing to do with basketball: "Germans like Dirk's authenticity. He is a flesh-and-blood superstar without the scandals of football players."

This image of Nowitzki makes him popular in He has gained a lot of exposure in his home country, as the spokesman for a major German bank and as a public welfare ambassador for a large-scale anti-drug campaign. Nowitzki's advertising revenue in Germany is far less than that of German national team captain Ballack. The Germans also have their own explanation for this: "We love Dirk, but it's a pity that he is not a football player.

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