360° Bundesliga Show

"I came with my father when I was a child, and he came with his father before me."

These lines from the song Borussia are among football's most beautiful, making them a cultural asset. They are the epitome of football romance. An expression of a special sense of community. All-embracing. Touching. Connecting. Engaging. Authentic. This leitmotif is taken up by the German Football Museum in its new staging of Bundesliga history. Cross-club. Cross-generational.
The substance of the story is told on several levels, which in turn is reflected in the 360 degree functionality of the exhibition space.
The underlying leitmotif is the story of a child who has gone to the match with his father, who had gone with his father before him. This narrative level accompanies the striking images, sounds and emotions from 58 years of Bundesliga football.
Beginning in a time when spectators are still smoking men in trench coats and their idols are called Helmut Rahn, Uwe Seeler and Franz Beckenbauer, our journey takes us through an era when footballers become pop stars and advertising icons, Günter Netzer makes his famous runs from deep and women start to make an appearance in the crowd; on past titanic relegation battles at Nürnberg and Kaiserslautern and some of the most dramatic moments in Bundesliga history such as FC Schalke 04's four-minute championship and HSV finally succumbing to relegation; and finishing with the family day out featuring global stars of the modern game such as Robert Lewandowski and the contemporary German 'classico', Borussia Dortmund versus Bayern Munich.
The images, sounds and emotions are heightened by a look at the progress made on the media landscape, from the traditional Bundesliga radio simulcast on a Saturday afternoon and the ubiquitous television coverage of the modern era to live data tracking and Virtual Bundesliga.
Pre-match excitement. Jangling nerves. Outbursts of emotion. Fascination. Memories. Recognition and recollection.
The 360-degree show has you feeling the pulse of the Bundesliga with every fibre of your being. You will keep recognising yourself in the stories told by six decades of the German top flight because you will have experienced them yourself in one form or another.
The boy putting stickers in his album. The opening credits of the football highlights show. The time that passes. The enthusiasm that remains - even if the way we perceive and interpret the game and the channels we consume it on have changed. The Panini album is now the Playstation; we don't simply collect our heroes anymore, we control them. People no longer just watch a game, they engage with it on second screens and play fantasy football.

In technological terms, the display is an innovation. The use of 3D mapping technology connects the fictional story with the original historical footage. Combined with the extra-wide projection area extending beyond our normal field of vision and an array of 433 individual hexagons, it permits impressive changes of perspective and creates vivid and thrilling film effects. The 8D sound from the in-seat headphones gives you the illusion of it coming from multiple directions, enhancing the 360-degree experience. And by the end, we have come full circle.

"I came with my father when I was a child, and he came with his father before me."