About Kicker

Kicker

kicker (officially kicker-Sportmagazin) is Germany's leading sports magazine, published in Nuremberg by Olympia-Verlag GmbH. Appearing on Mondays and Thursdays, it is devoted above all to football — the Bundesliga, the 2. Bundesliga, the national team and international football — alongside coverage of other major sports. Founded in 1920 by the football pioneer Walther Bensemann, kicker is one of the oldest sports publications in the world and has shaped German football journalism for more than a century with its player ratings, its "kicker-Elf" teams of the round and the Torjägerkanone awarded to the Bundesliga's top scorer. Its digital platform, kicker.de, is among the most-visited sports websites in the German-speaking world.

Overview

kicker is published twice weekly: the Monday edition looks back on the weekend's football with full match reports, analyses and the famous player grades, while the Thursday edition looks ahead to the coming matchday with previews, interviews and tactical features. Football dominates — typically around three-quarters of the content — but the magazine also covers handball, basketball, ice hockey, tennis, Formula 1 and Olympic sports, particularly around major tournaments.

The magazine's authority in German football culture rests on two institutions: the player ratings awarded after every Bundesliga match on the traditional German school-grade scale, and the kicker-Elf des Spieltags, the team of the round selected by the editors. The Torjägerkanone, the cannon-shaped trophy for the Bundesliga top scorer, is awarded by kicker and is one of the most recognised individual honours in German football. These editorial institutions give the magazine an influence on football discourse that extends far beyond its readership. The Monday-and-Thursday rhythm structures the German football week: Monday's issue digests the weekend — the Bundesliga matchday with grades, the international leagues, the analysis — while Thursday's issue previews the coming fixtures, the European competitions and the transfer market. Maintained for decades, this twice-weekly cadence makes kicker the metronome of German football: the conversation starts with what kicker graded, whom kicker selected, what kicker reported.

History

kicker was founded in 1920 by Walther Bensemann, a pioneering figure of German football who had earlier founded the Deutsche Fußball-Zeitung. Bensemann, of Jewish origin, was forced out of the magazine after the Nazi seizure of power; he emigrated to Switzerland, where he died in 1934. The magazine survived the war years and was re-established afterwards in Nuremberg, where it has been published ever since by the Olympia-Verlag, founded in 1946.

Bensemann's founding vision — a serious football paper for a serious football culture — survived his persecution and the war. The Olympia-Verlag's post-war relaunch in Nuremberg, the Franconian city that became German football's publishing capital, gave the magazine the institutional home it has kept for eight decades. The continuity is remarkable: founded by a Jewish football pioneer in 1920, expropriated by the Nazis, reborn in 1946 — kicker's history is German history in miniature, and the magazine has never forgotten it.

In the post-war decades kicker became the indispensable companion of the Bundesliga, founded in 1963: the Monday morning ritual of reading the player grades and the analysis of the weekend's matches became part of German football culture. The magazine navigated the commercialisation of football in the 1990s and 2000s without abandoning its sober, statistics-driven editorial identity, and it built kicker.de into one of Germany's leading sports portals, with live tickers, video content and an extensive database. The title has remained in the hands of the Olympia-Verlag, preserving an independence unusual in the consolidated German sports-media market.

Content

The Monday issue is the flagship: complete coverage of the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga matchdays with match reports, the player ratings for every player, the kicker-Elf des Spieltags, tables, statistics and analysis, plus coverage of the 3. Liga, the Regionalligen and women's football. International football — the Champions League, the top European leagues and international tournaments — receives extensive treatment, particularly in World Cup and European Championship years, when kicker publishes special editions.

The Thursday issue previews the coming weekend: tactical previews of the Bundesliga fixtures, interviews with players, coaches and officials, background features and the magazine's celebrated long-form football writing. Beyond football, the magazine covers the German handball, basketball and ice hockey leagues, tennis, winter sports and motorsport, with its depth varying by season and by the sporting calendar.

kicker's journalism is characterised by sobriety and expertise: fewer celebrity stories than the tabloid sports press, more tactical analysis, data and historical context. The player grades — awarded on the 1-to-6 German school scale, where 1 is the best — are debated by fans every week and have become a cultural institution in their own right. The magazine's special issues, yearbooks and the kicker football almanac extend the brand into reference publishing.

Coverage & Audience

kicker is sold throughout Germany at newsstands and by subscription, appearing twice weekly, and its digital platform kicker.de reaches millions of users with live scores, tickers, news and video. The magazine's core audience is the committed football fan — predominantly male, interested in depth rather than sensation, and loyal across generations. The Monday edition's grades and the Thursday edition's previews structure the football week for hundreds of thousands of readers.

The brand's influence extends beyond its circulation: kicker's ratings are cited across German media, its journalists appear as experts on television and radio, and the Torjägerkanone is covered as a news event each season. Internationally, kicker is recognised as one of Europe's authoritative football publications, and its English-language digital content serves an international audience interested in German football.

Ownership

kicker is published by Olympia-Verlag GmbH, based in Nuremberg. The publishing house was founded in 1946 and has published kicker continuously since the post-war relaunch, making it one of the longest-standing publisher-title relationships in German magazine history. The company's focus is sports media, with kicker as its flagship and kicker.de as its digital arm.

The ownership structure has kept kicker independent of the large German media conglomerates — it belongs neither to Axel Springer, nor to Funke, nor to Burda — which the magazine's editors have traditionally presented as a guarantee of editorial independence in a football world of growing commercial pressures. The Olympia-Verlag also publishes special editions, yearbooks and digital products under the kicker brand.

Digital Presence

kicker.de is one of the most-visited sports websites in the German language, offering live tickers for matches across the world's leagues, breaking news, video content, statistics databases and the digital editions of the magazine's analyses and ratings. The kicker app delivers personalised match alerts and live scores, and the brand is active across social media with football news, video clips and interactive formats.

The digital transformation has been central to kicker's strategy: while the twice-weekly print magazine remains the editorial flagship and the home of the famous grades, the website and app serve the minute-by-minute needs of football fans. The combination — the authority and depth of the print brand with the speed and reach of the digital platform — has kept kicker at the centre of German football journalism for more than a century.

The Olympia-Verlag's Nuremberg home has housed the magazine since the 1946 re-establishment: the Franconian city that became German football's publishing capital, the specialist football publisher built around the title. The Monday-and-Thursday rhythm is the metronome of German football: the weekend digested on Monday — the grades, the Elf, the analysis — the coming fixtures previewed on Thursday — the cadence the football public has kept for decades. The kicker.de portal extends the authority into the digital age: the live scores, the news, the database — among the most-visited sports websites in the German-speaking world. The Bensemann founding history — the 1920 launch, the pioneer's persecution and emigration, the post-war rebirth — is the institutional memory: German history in miniature, never forgotten. The player ratings — the school-grade scale after every Bundesliga match — are the cultural institution: the grades debated in every football conversation, the magazine's influence on the discourse extending far beyond its readership. In the German sports press, kicker is the authority: the century-old football magazine that shaped the journalism of the game and that remains its indispensable chronicle.