(by Steve Hopkins)
When Fan Zhendong first arrived in Germany, there was little doubt that the defending Olympic Champion would win matches. What few predicted was how quickly he would move the needle off the table. With one season under his belt, and a few matches into his second season (at his new club home), Fan has done for the TTBL what few players in any sport ever do for any league. TTBL has ballooned beyond just Germany – Fan has made it a global product.
Just look at the numbers from Saarbrucken last season. The TTBL finished the 2025/26 regular season with a total of 73,993 spectators across 132 league matches, a little over 560 tickets per match. Those aren’t massive numbers when one is comparing to the big American sports, but with how small these venues are, that’s a lot of sold out spaces. Saarbrucken, where Fan played his home games, tripled the number of paid tickets. And in the Cup Final Four, 5200 fans attended – a new record. Those spectator numbers for Saarbrucken were just shy of the record in Dusseldorf where Timo Boll was twice World No. 1 while competing for the team. This year, Fan will have the advantage of the larger stadium and the rich history in Dusseldorf to help pack in even more spectators.
The story online is just as impressive. Within a few days of announcing Fan’s signing, Saarbrucken had already increased the follower counts sixfold – fueled largely by its Chinese social media channel. The league saw a similar explosion in popularity, with TTBL Managing Director Nico Stehle noting that the TTBL established its presence on Chinese social media platforms – with these crazy statistics: TTBL published 185 total posts on Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and RedNote and they reached 33.7 million “views”, generated over 155,000 interactions, and had a follower count of 430,000 separate accounts. That was last year – in the first three months of this current season, there are already 73.8 million views across all channels – new record, after new record.
So where does this go from here? Saarbrucken’s attendance numbers were achieved in a city that was still building its fan base. Dusseldorf already had the league’s biggest following before Fan arrived, plus access to a much larger arena. Add in Fan’s built-in audience in China, and it is not hard to imagine a series of new attendance and viewership records.
On the table, the picture is equally promising. With Fan joining Dang Qiu, Anton Kallberg, and USA’s Kanak Jha, Dusseldorf is the clear favorite. As for Fan himself, he recently said he isn’t satisfied: “This season, maybe I can play much better than last year,” he said. Last year, Fan’s squad had a triple crown of winning the championship, the cup, and the Euro club title all in the same season. If this year he is better – the rest of the league should beware.
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