After almost six decades, FC Schalke 04 is discontinuing its club magazine Schalker Kreisel. The “Kreisel” was a piece of royal blue cultural heritage.

FC Schalke 04 is continuing its tabula rasa. Some will say: finally. Others, on the other hand, will feel sick to their stomachs at the thought. The fact is: there will be no more print editions of the Schalke Kreisel for the new season.

The club is thus ending an almost 60-year tradition. There have been written club announcements since the 1950s. From 1966, the magazine was called “Der Kreisel”.

The club magazine of the Royal Blues was first published in 1971 as Schalker Kreisel. For many years, the “Kreisel” was an integral part of the Royal Blue’s cultural heritage at every home game and was also sold outside the Parkstadion and in the arena or later distributed free of charge. Most recently, the already thinned-out Schalker Kreisel was only sent to club members four times a year as a members’ magazine for cost reasons. But that is now a thing of the past.

The print edition for the 120th anniversary of the club in May was the last production. The club informed its members of this in a letter to members on Tuesday. In it, it first explained the far-reaching personnel decisions to its 180,000 members once again.

“However, apart from the restructuring within the administration, we are also taking measures that we believe are important for the sustainable recovery and restructuring of our association – for example, material costs have been significantly reduced in recent years, in this round alone by a mid-single-digit million amount,” it continued. “Some decisions that contribute to this are difficult to make and not popular. For example, the Schalker Kreisel: in future, the members’ magazine will no longer be available in print format. After intensive analysis, we have come to the conclusion that the costs, especially for printing and mailing, are no longer economically viable – we are talking about a mid-six-figure sum.”

In the meantime, the Schalker Kreisel was also available as an app. “However, the brand will continue to exist in any case – especially in the clubhouse, where we will continue to provide you with exciting reports, in-depth interviews and in-depth stories on club topics and hopefully inspire you,” explained the club. As a magazine, however, the Schalker Kreisel is now only (a part of) Schalker history