Werner Hansch is the voice of the Ruhr region. No other German sports commentator has such a distinctive voice that can be heard among hundreds of other voices. He wrote football history with his energetic TV and radio reports and is still one of the most popular and best-known commentators on German television.
With heart and gut – that could be the motto of sports reporter Werner Hansch. Passion at the microphone is his trademark, he brings the emotions from the football stadium into the homes of his viewers and listeners. But his path that led him to the announcer’s booths of the football temples was anything but predetermined.
Werner Hansch Lecture Topics
- Resilience – Once in hell and back! – From gambling addict to start-up founder
- Making the most of opportunities – My unbelievable “diversions” to become a sports reporter legend
Werner Hansch – Awards:
Nothing is rehearsed, everything comes from the gut. Werner Hansch is a commentator with a passion. He has received several awards for this. In 1988 he was honoured by the Association of German Sports Journalists for his military reportage at the Olympic Games in Seoul.
In 1994 he was nominated for the Grimme Prize for his Bundesliga commentary work on SAT 1 and in 1997 he was awarded the “Golden Lion” by RTL. In the same year, he received the “Telestar” from ARD and ZDF for his reportage on the UEFA Cup final match between Inter Milan and FC Schalke 04.
In 1998, Sportbild voted him “Germany’s most popular sports reporter” and in 2005, together with Oliver Welke, he was nominated for the German Television Award for his UEFA Champions League presentation.
More about Werner Hansch:
Werner Hansch was born in 1938 in Recklinghausen, or to be more precise, in Recklinghausen-Süd, because he attaches great importance to that. With four collieries on his doorstep, his future was actually predetermined, but Werner Hansch was determined to go to grammar school and not work in the “pütt” and so he worked his father until he let him go to grammar school, which he left with his Abitur in 1958.
He then studied law and modern history, which he dropped out of in the fifth semester after his parents died within four weeks. The academic education became secondary, because Werner Hansch was on his own and from then on had to provide for himself. Among other things, he worked underground for several weeks. Today he describes this time as a valuable experience that definitely shaped him for his later career.
From 1962, he studied education and then worked as a teacher. Afterwards he added sociology and politics to his studies and graduated in 1976 with a degree in social science with distinction.
Even before his studies, Werner Hansch had helped out as a track commentator at the Recklinghausen harness racing track, where he was so well received that from then on he acted as track spokesman for all four West German harness racing tracks. In this way he financed his studies in politics and sociology. In 1973, he stood in for the incapacitated stadium announcer of FC Schalke 04. At that time, he had no clue about football and made a “historic slip of the tongue” when he announced the Schalke goalkeeper as follows: “With the starting number one: Norbert Nigbur”. Horses have starting numbers, but footballers have back numbers. A slip of the tongue that was embarrassing but never hurt him. His carefree manner and lightness as well as his distinctive voice delighted the FC Schalke 04 officials and he promptly followed in the footsteps of the then stadium announcer. As early as 1974, the job as stadium announcer followed at the World Cup in the Park Stadium in Gelsenkirchen.
In 1978, he came to the attention of WDR in the person of Kurt Brumme and was brought to the radio station. From then on, Hansch commented on countless Bundesliga, European Cup, European Championship and World Cup matches for WDR and ARD. After he had already done excellent work for WDR in the field of football for more than seven years, he commented on his first equestrian tournament in 1985 “as a stopgap measure”. Although he was again “thrown in at the deep end”, he also mastered this premiere with aplomb and so it came about that Werner Hansch commented on all major equestrian events for ARD and WDR on the radio in future.
One highlight was certainly the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, where he was allowed to commentate on four Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal for the German equestrian team.
In the late autumn of 1990, Heribert Fassbender brought him into the ARD sports show team to replace Reinhold Beckmann, who had moved to the pay-TV channel Premiere. Until 1992, he served radio and television in parallel.
In 1992, he switched to “ran”-SAT1-Fußball with the Bundesliga and commented on many Bundesliga, UEFA Cup and occasionally international matches there from 1992 to 2006. From 2003 onwards, he was on the road for SAT1 in the Champions League.
In the summer of 2006, he received an offer from the new Bundesliga channel arena tv, for which he reported from the football temples of the Republic in his usual authentic style from 2006 to 2009. Radio also had him back from 2006 – 2010 as a football expert at the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship.
But even away from the football temples and equestrian stadiums, his voice is still very much in demand. He continues to speak in countless radio and TV spots for branded companies and TV productions and is used as a presenter at gala events, sports or business talks, congresses, conferences and symposia, press conferences, product presentations and trade fair appearances as well as a keynote speaker. Werner Hansch always finds the “right tone” and convinces with his sovereign stage presence. Live, digital or hybrid.
Since 2013, Werner Hansch has been chairman of the advisory board of the Rudi Assauer Gemeinnützige Initiative Demenz und Gesellschaft GmbH (non-profit initiative for dementia and society), which has set itself the goal of removing the taboos surrounding dementia in the public eye.
In 2020, Werner Hansch outed himself as a gambling addict in the TV show “Promi Big Brother”, which he won with an overwhelming majority. Following “Promi Big Brother” and after successful therapy, he paid back almost all the debts he had accumulated as a result of his addiction and has been an ambassador for the Fachverband Glücksspielsucht e.V. ever since. Werner Hansch is the only German football commentator to have been given the honour of a farewell match on German TV.