If you are fan of Bundesliga side Borussia Monchengladbach or your favourite club is playing an away game in Borussia-Park, you can make your presence felt in the stadium as a cardboard cutout for €19 and contribute to charities raising funds for coronavirus pandemic.
The German club, which is currently fourth in the Bundesliga standings, has been looking at innovative ways to recreate the atmosphere the presence of over 54000 fans create during match day if the league is to restart behind closed doors.
Bundesliga was suspended in March following the coronavirus outbreak but league authorities are keen to restart football action by the end of May behind closed doors if the government gives them a go ahead.
Monchengladbach have already ordered 12000 cardboard cut-outs to support the ‘Stay at home. Be in the stands’ campaign and the club has now appealed to even fans of other clubs to order cut-outs that will be placed in the away end of the stadium.
“The campaign organisers are regularly overrun with orders; we can hardly keep up trying to install them all,” Gladbach fan representative Thomas Weinmann was quoted as saying by the Bundesliga website. “But we’re obviously delighted with the overwhelming support it’s received.”
A similar experiment of recreating the stadium atmosphere was done in the Taiwan Baseball League games over the weekend where cardboard and plastic mannequins were placed in the stadium while robots played bands in the stadium.