On Saturday the TTC OE Bad Homburg welcomes the league leaders from Fulda. Table tennis fans from China should also be aware of the Hessian showdown in the 1st Bundesliga.
Bad Homburg – It’s as if table tennis players who practice their sport at the highest international level live in two different worlds. For Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Germany has not only become home after he came here from Kiev with his parents at the age of three. He is also one of the top German players in his sport who has already achieved considerable international success, such as in his case winning six Olympic medals in singles, doubles and team competition.
The now 36-year-old, known as “Dima” by his fans, is currently the most successful professional in the German Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL). He has won nine times in nine league games and is the only undefeated number one of the twelve Bundesliga teams. Thanks to him and the second high-profile newcomer, the Taiwanese Kao Cheng-Jui, placed 26th in the world rankings – Ovtcharov is 19th – the TTC Rhönsprudel Fulda-Maberzell developed from a relegation candidate to a title contender. On Saturday at 5:30 p.m., the East Hesse team will compete as league leaders against promoted team TTC OE Bad Homburg in the Ober-Erlenbacher Wingert sports hall.
The hosts expect a reasonably well-attended venue on Seulberger Straße for this first Hesse derby in the TTBL, but interest in “Dima” will still be comparatively manageable. Even though the father of two is traveling in his hometown of Düsseldorf, where he trains daily at the German Table Tennis Center, he is rarely approached on the street due to his popularity. In China it would be and is completely different.
“The players here are superstars, they can’t do without bodyguards,” says Claudia Herweg, the former president of the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB). Ma Long, similar to Roger Federer in tennis, Tom Brady or Mikaela Shiffrin in American football, known as the “GOAT” (Greatest of all time) in skiing, is omnipresent in the Middle Kingdom and a very sought-after advertising figure, adds Xiaofei Sui, a marketing specialist from Hamburg.
The two business partners Herweg and Sui entered into a cooperation with Ovtcharov in order to make him even better known through their marketing agency in the table tennis country of China than he already is through his purely sporting activities. “There is an imaginary wall between Germany and China. Everything you do here doesn’t even reach there,” explains Herweg.
Western media is not broadcast in the socialist state and social networks on the Internet are blocked. The Chinese use similar platforms such as Weibo (similar to X/Twitter), WeChat (like Facebook) and Little Red Book (like Instagram). With the help of the agency, Ovcharov has been represented on the platforms with his own channel since 2023.
Three million people interested in a short video
“One of his posts has already had three million clicks,” reports ex-DTTB official Herweg, who did not run for re-election due to a chronic illness but continues to work in the table tennis business, with some enthusiasm. Ovtcharov’s posting was a short video with which the German table tennis professional congratulated his Chinese followers on a holiday.
The former world number one has already practiced a few words in Chinese, but characters are usually used to translate the photos and videos. Ovtcharov has already been followed by 1.38 million users on Weibo, adds Xiaofei Sui. Of course, this is significantly less than superstars like Ma Long (around 10 million), but again completely different values than those achieved by table tennis players in the Western world. For example, 162,000 users are interested in Timo Boll’s activities on Instagram.
Looking for sponsors for World Table Tennis
Ovtcharov and his two business partners ran into each other again at the WTT Champions in Frankfurt. Through their agency, Herweg and Sui are trying to make international tournaments of this large caliber attractive to larger companies. The subsidiary World Table Tennis (WTT) of the World Table Tennis Association could still use sponsors, especially in Europe. Meanwhile, Ovtcharov was surprisingly eliminated in the first round, and for his colleagues from the German national squad it was over in the quarter-finals at the latest.
The audience response in the ball sports hall was still quite decent, although not quite as good as at the WTT premiere last year. Around 20,000 people wanted to take part in the eight days of the international tournament. But it only got really crowded in the stands on weekends. That’s how it should be in Ober-Erlenbach on Saturday.
Ovtcharov’s praise for the league rivals from Bad Homburg
“We are proud of the good start to the season and hope it continues like this,” said Ovtcharov, adding that his new team with this line-up could have a say in the title award. Recently, however, Fulda suffered a setback in the cup against league rivals Werder Bremen. Ovtcharov won his singles again, but in the end it was 3:2 for Bremen. The Hanseatic League made it to the Final Four, as did the team from Bad Homburg for the first time. The final round is scheduled for January 4th in Neu-Ulm, where Ovtcharov was in the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2023 with the now dissolved TTC Neu-Ulm.
“It’s nice to see that there is a new club in Bad Homburg that wants to establish itself in the Bundesliga in the long term,” says the two-time European champion. “In Helmut Hampl, the TTC OE has a true table tennis professor as a coach and in Kristian Karlsson an international leader.”
Dimitrij Ovtcharov’s participation on Saturday is not yet 100 percent certain. He recently complained about a “lack of energy” in Frankfurt due to the long season with many kilometers of travel. When “Dima” plays in the Hesse derby, he will definitely report back to his Chinese fans.
