The “Ballesterer” comes away empty-handed

Unintentionally financially independent: The Austrian football magazine “Ballesterer” has been published ten times a year since 2000

What happens when fans come to power in football clubs? What could a fair distribution of television money in Austrian football look like? There is also a report about two weeks of the World Cup in the USA and the French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, who is in prison in Algeria for researching a football club in the Berber region of Kabylia: The Austrian football magazine Ballesterer offers reporting that you would not find in the sports sections of other newspapers.

Founded in 2000 as a fanzine in Vienna, the Ballesterer is published ten times a year. With a circulation of 20,000 copies, the magazine is extremely successful considering the nine million inhabitants of Austria. For comparison: Germany has more than 80 million inhabitants, football here almost has the character of a state religion and the work of the national coach is, at least at times, discussed more intensively in public than that of the Chancellor. The most critical football magazine in this country, 11 Freunde, has sold 87,775 magazines.

Since 2024, Austria has had a funding pot generously filled with 20 million euros with which the country wants to promote quality journalism: In 2026, 1.8 million euros will flow to the “Kronen-Zeitung” and around one million to the “Standard”. The “Ballesterer” receives nothing.

In contrast to the monthly magazine 11 Freunde, which was also self-published in 2000 and is now majority owned by the Spiegel Group, the Austrian magazine has retained its independence and is published by the Ballesterer magazine publisher. “We live primarily from our readers,” says Ballesterer editor-in-chief Nicole Selmer, who is also a member of Borussia Dortmund.

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