New WhatsApp message from Sofia in the hockey group: “It’s my birthday today and I’m bringing cake – I’m happy about everyone who stays a bit longer after training to celebrate with me 😉”. Great, cake! Lukas has been the first club chairman of his local club for almost a year now and is happy about this delicious change.

Since they founded the WhatsApp group for their club, many things in communication have become easier. Almost everyone uses WhatsApp privately and you can quickly and easily transmit information to the entire training team. Changed training times, announcements for upcoming events, information about upcoming games, arrangements regarding travel to games, and much more has already been discussed in the hockey WhatsApp group.

Lukas also wants to share important information via the WhatsApp group: the annual general meeting is coming up. Just before he writes the message, his phone signals an incoming new message. Tom, also on the board, writes: “Hi Lukas, did you hear the latest? Apparently clubs are no longer allowed to use WhatsApp groups for official communication – and there are fines of up to 20 million euros 😱” (There is something to the substance, but not to the number, as Lukas is about to find out. The 20 million is the absolute ceiling the GDPR sets for the most serious violations there are – for a club, that is not a realistic figure.)

Lukas gets a brief shock when he sees the sum and immediately sits down at the laptop to check Tom’s statement. After less than a minute of searching, he finds the following article:

Communication in Clubs: WhatsApp and Privacy Problems

Since May 25, 2018, it has become significantly more difficult for clubs to use WhatsApp for group communication. The reason for this is the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which defines clear stricter rules for processing personal data.

As soon as WhatsApp has access to the address book – the usual setting – the app matches the contacts stored there, phone numbers included, against its servers. That also affects people who know nothing about it and have never agreed to it. Whoever uses the app is the one responsible under data protection law for passing those details on – in a club, that means the club itself.

For purely personal purposes this is unproblematic; the GDPR does not apply there. Voluntary use among members also remains unproblematic – people who get together in a group privately are doing it for themselves. It looks different once the club makes WhatsApp its official medium: the club is then the controller for that processing. Landessportbund NRW, the sports federation of Germany’s largest state, is blunt about it in its guide to the legal position for clubs: setting up WhatsApp groups through the club or club officials such as coaches “is not compatible with the GDPR”. The only route it considers workable is voluntary participation by the members themselves.

And that is exactly where it gets difficult in practice: consent only counts as freely given if you can refuse it without any disadvantage. North Rhine-Westphalia’s data protection commissioner, Bettina Gayk, set this out in April 2025 for official use inside public authorities: there, WhatsApp and comparable non-transparent messenger services are “impermissible in principle” (grundsätzlich unzulässig – narrow exceptions remain conceivable), and the voluntariness a consent would require “is hardly likely to be present”, because an internal work WhatsApp group creates group pressure. A club is not a public authority, and the supervisory authority was not commenting on clubs here – but the reasoning carries over: whoever is missing from the club group misses the arrangements. That is not much of a free choice.

And now? A few minutes and intensive research later, several things have become clearer to Lukas.

If the club uses WhatsApp for official purposes, the club is the controller for that processing – and a WhatsApp group set up or mandated by the club is, in Landessportbund NRW’s assessment, not compatible with the GDPR.
The only workable route is voluntary participation by the members. If they organize themselves in a WhatsApp group of their own accord, that is unproblematic – it becomes critical as soon as the board declares or prescribes that route as the official channel. And participation is only voluntary if nobody who stays out misses anything.
Using a WhatsApp alternative for clubs and obtaining explicit consent from members for everything is too much effort or associated with too many costs for him.

The more Lukas thinks about WhatsApp communication for clubs, the more inappropriate WhatsApp appears to him as a means of communication. It has already led to some complications in the past. Not every club member uses WhatsApp, important messages get lost in a huge communication flow, it serves purely for information transmission, and now there’s the problem with GDPR!

WhatsApp is a communication platform and not an app for clubs.

What we need is a privacy-compliant WhatsApp alternative for clubs that ideally offers additional supporting functions, thinks Lukas and enters “WhatsApp for clubs” into Google and comes across “Klubraum”, an app tailor-made for clubs that is privacy-compliant and thus a sensible WhatsApp alternative for clubs.

Since Klubraum’s servers are located in Frankfurt and hosted by a Finnish company (and thus privacy-compliant according to EU law), Klubraum can be used in compliance with GDPR. We also guarantee that data is never shared with third parties unless this is absolutely necessary for using Klubraum and expressly desired by the user.

Lukas is particularly pleased to learn that Klubraum rejects the sharing of data as practiced by Facebook and WhatsApp out of conviction and is intended as a protected area for clubs.

Reassured, Lukas can go to sleep. Shortly before he falls asleep, he writes Tom another message: “Thanks Tom! Luckily nothing will come of the 20 million – but you were right that we should take a look at this 😉 I found a great app as a WhatsApp alternative that’s perfect for our club. You’ll like it!! I’ll show it to you tomorrow after training while eating cake.”