However, the Baskets will have to cope with a significantly smaller sponsorship package as of next year. While the same amount of money will flow to the Hardtberg in the 2022/23 season as in previous years, the Magenta subsidies will be reduced by around 40 percent in 2023/24. In return, the Baskets will have the opportunity to acquire a new title sponsor for the professional team as well as a name sponsor for their own hall from 1 July 2023. Telekom's support is not affected by this.

"This means that the rules for Telekom's withdrawal and the end of the decades-long partnership are contractually fixed," says Wolfgang Wiedlich, managing director of BonBas GmbH, which is the economic sponsor of the Bundesliga team and owner of the 6,000-seater arena including the training centre.

The coming season is thus economically secure for the time being. Nevertheless, the result of the negotiations poses "a great challenge for the club, especially since the Baskets have a high infrastructure cost apparatus in front of them with their own sports property," Wiedlich continues. The Telekom Dome costs the club about one million euros a year, which has to be earned by the professional section.

The ProBaskets, an association of medium-sized companies from the region that support the club, also see difficult times ahead for the club. Already in the 2023/24 season, there will be a seven-digit hole in the Baskets' budget, and after the end of the cooperation with Telekom, even half of the total budget will be missing, ProBaskets calculates. And at the same time criticises Telekom's strongly expanded sponsorship of the Bundesliga football team FC Bayern Munich.

"Of course, we have to respect Deutsche Telekom's decision. However, it is at least incomprehensible against the background that the company is at the same time considerably expanding its commitment to football in other cities, especially since this decision, at the company's headquarters of all places, is causing existential difficulties for the Bundesliga club in Bonn with the largest number of spectators and the only well-known one," says ProBaskets spokesman Alexander Knauss.

The hopes of encouraging Telekom to reconsider its withdrawal as name sponsor, originally announced last November for July 2022, have thus been dashed for the Baskets. An alternative way of covering the costs of the Bundesliga budget must be found quickly, as the application for a licence in the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) together with proof of financing must be submitted by April 2023. "The time to develop a follow-up perspective for the Baskets is conceivably short," says Knauss.

After the enormous losses caused by the Corona pandemic and the associated ghost games, which hit the Bonn team particularly hard as the club with the highest average attendance in the BBL, the energy crisis has now doubled electricity and heating costs, causing further misery.

And Peter Mönnig, 1st Chairman of Baskets Bonn e.V., even sees the promotion of young talent in danger. The club invests around half a million euros annually from its own funds in its youth department with 500 children and 25 teams, two of which play in the junior national league. "It is not yet possible to foresee what effects the Telekom withdrawal will have on our youth work. A cost-intensive support structure has been built up here over many years, which we would like to maintain."

Original text: Tobias Schild

Translation: Mareike Graepel