German Bundesliga football club TSG 1899 Hoffenheim has extended its stadium naming rights deal with waste management company PreZero.
Part of the German retail group Schwarz Gruppe, which includes supermarket chain Lidl, PreZero first took on the naming rights in January 2019 under a deal that was reportedly worth around €4.5m (£4.04m/$5.07m) per year.
Hoffenheim’s home will now remain known as PreZero Arena through to June 30, 2025, with Schwarz also set to receive wider commercial benefits as a premium partner of the club. This will include various promotional activities for PreZero, as well as Lidl’s ‘Saskia’ brand becoming the club’s official mineral water partner.
Since the first contract was signed, TSG and PreZero have placed an emphasis on encouraging sustainable business practices. A reusable cup system has been implemented at the stadium which is helping to prevent the use of 500,000 plastic cups per season.
Meanwhile, a grass recycling project has seen clippings from the stadium’s pitch used to manufacture mobile phone covers. TSG and PreZero said further projects are under development.
“For us, PreZero is the ideal partner which fits perfectly with our sustainable future strategy ‘TSG ist Bewegung’,” said Peter Görlich, managing director of TSG Hoffenheim. “It is an extraordinary sign and strong signal that the Schwarz Gruppe has placed so much trust in our close cooperation at the present time.”
Dietmar Böhm, managing director of PreZero, added: “Even before we started our partnership in January 2019, we had found that our vision of a world without wasting resources closely matched TSG Hoffenheim’s fundamental understanding of environmental management issues.
“In practice, this has been confirmed by many successfully implemented projects and actions. We are very pleased that we have now been able to extend this groundbreaking cooperation for an even longer period of time so that we can tackle further sustainability initiatives together in the future.”
The 30,000-seat stadium had been known as the Rhein-Neckar Arena, after the region in which the club is based, and was previously sponsored by renewable energy company Wirsol.
Image: TSG 1899 Hoffenheim
