Fan Site Of The Week - U2Tour

Continuing our link ups with fan sites across the globe, this week, as the band moves to Berlin, we are delighted to feature U2Tour.

The Zoo spoke to Hans from the core team : 

U2tour.de was founded on 22 September 2000, and this year celebrates its 15th birthday. The site started out as a common portal and chat forum for several German U2 fan sites, at the start of the Elevation Tour in 2001 & its message board is now the biggest German language U2 online forum.

After the site’s success during the Elevation Tour, we decided to turn the then purely concert and tour focused site into a general U2 fan site, and since 2002 the site hosts news about the band and its releases. Over the subsequent years, more and more content was added.

Today u2tour.de contains a comprehensive U2 gig archive, an overview of U2 side projects, regular specials featuring interviews with e.g. Anton Corbijn, a U2 travel guide for fans travelling to Dublin, Berlin or the US, a list of all awards won by U2, a book corner, and much more. 

The current u2tour.de core team of Björn, Daniel, Didi and Hans, have been with the site from the beginning, and previously were also involved in several U2 fanzines. Flo joined the team as database expert in 2002.This sumer Sabine, Christoph and Oliver joined the adminteam and will take greater responsibility for the site in the future.Over time, and with the site’s growing content, we needed ever more members for our team - these now include Conny, Sarah, Hanna, Dirk, Torsten, Caro, Navid, Sebastian, Andreas and Anne, and also supporters, who have got "special tasks" in our team: Malte, Phaser 

For the 2015 Innocence and Experience Tour u2tour.de is a fantastic online resource for information about the tour, and has members of its team at EVERY show of the European leg of the tour, reporting live via Twitter and other channels. In 2009, u2tour.de was the first fan site to use CoverItLive to report from U2 concerts, but this has has now been replaced by a new live blog during the European shows. And they are planning other flash mob during shows... 

Apart from the general site, u2tour.de has also been known to throw a good party or two! Our highlight so far was a large party at the Hansa Studios in Berlin in 2005, where U2 did early recordings for Achtung Baby, most famously One. The next day Bono mentioned the party on stage at the Olympiastadium, and we were proud to host not only hundreds of fans from around the world, but also members of U2’s crew (such as Dennis Sheehan) and The Killers.

This year we are planning for another party at the Hansa Studios on the night of 26 September - (it’s already sold out!) 

Finally, and in line with U2 fan site tradition, u2tour.de also supports a number of charities, and has been able to donate significant sums from our work.