Veltins Arena (FC Schalke)

Description: The Veltins Arena is a football stadium in the German city of Gelsenkirchen that is considered one of the most modern ... more

Veltins Arena (FC Schalke) ... stadiums in the world. Originally named the Arena AufSchalke, it opened in 2001 as the new home ground for the Bundesliga football club FC Schalke 04. It hosted the 2004 UEFA Champions League final and 5 matches in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, including a quarter-final. Accredited as a UEFA Five-Star Stadium, it has a league capacity of 61,482 (standing and seated) and an international capacity of 53,951 (seated only). The naming rights to the stadium were sold on July 1, 2005 to the German brewery Veltins.

Newest Review: ... which is a sprawling mass of pitheads and factories in the middle of the Ruhrgebiet, the heart of heavy industry in Germany. The miners have always been in the majority amongst the Schalke fans, and just a few years ago the terraces would be crowded with men who had come straight from the coalface to watch a midweek game. This is no longer the case as many of the mines now stand idle, but ... more

... Gelsenkirchen is still very much a working class area, and the attendances remain high thanks to the low entrance prices. The town itself has little character, there is as good as nothing to do there on a Friday evening (unless you are looking for...more

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Veltins Arena (FC Schalke): Cheap but not so cheerful (731 words)
by - written on 19/02/01 (Very useful, 49 readings)
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The home of FC Schalke 04 is in many respects typical of a lot of German football grounds – it is basically a huge concrete bowl with one covered stand, built to house as many fans as possible with minimum regard paid to spectator comfort. The surprising thing about the Parkstadion is that it is not really that old, only having been constructed for the 1974 World Cup. I assume that it was a major improvement on the club’s original home on the Glück-auf-Kampf-Bahn, but the designers obviously weren’t feeling particularly inventive on the day they designed this stadium! The main advantage of watching a game here is that a terrace ticket only ... Read the complete review

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