Berlin - Germany could not have had a better start to the European football championships. A 2-0 win in its first game with Poland combined with warm summer weather means that the public viewing areas that have sprung across Germany are likely to be overflowing again on Thursday when the former European and world champions meet Croatia.
But apart from the jubilant football fans, it is also Germany's hard-pressed brewing industry that has been celebrating the national team's successful launch to their battle to secure the European football championship title for the fourth time.
"The breweries are completely euphoric," said Marc-Oliver Huhnholz, spokesman for the German Brewery Association with the industry hoping that the three-week championships will give a one-to- two per cent kick to beer sales.
Indeed, much like German football fans, the nation's breweries are hoping for a repeat of the 2006 World Cup which was dubbed the summer fairy tale in the country as the Germany team placed amid amid a national frenzy.
But apart from mirroring the beer sales clocked up in Germany two years ago, the nation's brewery industry hopes that an increase in beer consumption during the European championships will also help to lift the country's annual beer sales out of the doldrums.
Moreover, the breweries are hoping that the trend to higher beer consumption during the European championships will continue through to the Beijing Olympics in August.
Already flat-screen televisions have been flying off the shelves around Germany, with sales in the first quarter bounding ahead by 47 per cent and retailers talking about 5.3 million TV sets being sold over the whole year.
The manufacturers of mobile phones with television reception have also factored in a pickup in sales from the European championships, which are being staged in Switzerland and Austria.
Germany's giant sporting goods maker Adidas has forecast sales of the national team's football jerseys will top one million this year.
Meanwhile, however, data shows the home of the Oktoberfest is losing its taste for beer with Germans have been switching in recent years to the finer art of wine drinking.
Wine consumption last year hit an all-time high averaging 20.6 litres per head of the population, industry figures showed.
At the same time, German beer consumption has slumped from an average of 142.7 litres a head each year in 1990 to a record low of 111.7 litres last year. Eight years ago consumption stood at 125.6 litres.
The fall in beer consumption in Germany has already sparked a major shakeout in the nation's beer business with smaller breweries closing their doors or been taken over by larger rivals.
But already in May, retailers began stocking up their supplies ahead of the start of the football championships and the European summer sporting season.
The breweries are now hoping that beer consumption per head this year could edge back up to the 2006 level of about 116 litres.
A boon to the breweries has the emergence of public viewing areas at the World Cup.
In a sense, access to the electricity supply for a television screen and somewhere to keep the crates of beer cold are the only key components for creating public viewing areas.
This means that in addition to major vantage points such as Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate, bars, restaurants, street corners and even vacant blocks of land have been transformed into areas for football fans to gather and watch the matches.
But other factors will also be required to help ensure that it is a successful European Championship for the German brewers.
There is the weather, which according to forecasts is to turn cooler and wetter from Wednesday onwards.
But, most important, German captain Michael Ballack's team needs to keep the Germans' hopes alive of their first European football championship title since 1996 by progressing towards the final in Vienna on June 29.
"The national eleven also has to contribute," said Huhnholz.
