World Cup Brings Little Pleasure to German Brothels

BERLIN, June 30 — On the night before Germany was to play Argentina in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, the prostitutes who work at the Artemis Sauna Club here were putting on their game faces.

Hamburg’s red-light district had expected a surge of customers, but for brothels there and elsewhere, the increase was smaller than expected.

With tens of thousands of soccer fans piling into Berlin for the game on Friday, this was going to be one of the women’s last big chances during the tournament. The mood in the club, however, was as subdued as the lighting.

“The last time Germany played, not that many men came here,” said Luna, 33, a Serbian woman who came here from Bavaria to work during the four weeks of the tournament. “Maybe they went out to a pub and drank instead.”

To the list of pernicious things that have not happened at this World Cup, add one more: a spike in the sex trade. While clubs like Artemis have been busier than usual after games, the tournament has generated nowhere near the surge in demand for prostitution — or the influx of temporary prostitutes from Eastern Europe and Asia — that many experts predicted.

“Our business is O.K., but it’s not great,” said Egbert Krumeich, the public relations manager for Artemis. “We get 250 to 260 customers on a game day. We’d be happier getting 600 a day.”

Soccer and sex, it appears, do not mix very well — even in Germany, where prostitution is legal and the World Cup organizers have pushed the slogan “A Time to Make Friends.” There are plenty of friendly fans here, most of them male and many pie-eyed by alcohol. The bad news for the sex trade is that they would rather guzzle another beer than go looking for a prostitute.
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“For most people, it’s just too complicated,” Ms. Klee said. “It’s difficult to say to your friends, ‘I’m going to leave you now and go to a brothel for 20 minutes.’ That’s not normal behavior.”