About Alles was zaehlt
Alles was zaehlt (English: All That Counts) is a German daily soap opera that has aired on RTL every weekday evening since 4 September 2006. Set in the industrial city of Essen, it unfolds around the Steinkamp family and the elite Steinkamp Sport and Wellness centre they own, a glittering arena where figure skaters, ice dancers and ambitious athletes chase Olympic dreams under intense pressure. The series weaves competitive sport together with boardroom power plays, making the rink and the family business equally important stages for its drama.
At the centre of it all stand Richard and Simone Steinkamp, the formidable couple who built the centre and rule over it. Played from the first episode by Silvan-Pierre Leirich and Tatjana Clasing, they embody the show's core tension between family loyalty and ruthless ambition, presiding over rivalries, romances and betrayals that ripple through the skating world and their own dynasty. Around them orbit trainers, athletes and newcomers whose careers and hearts are made and broken on the ice.
Like its sister soaps, the show has become a launchpad for young German performers and a fixture of RTL's prime-access lineup, balancing sporting spectacle with the everyday entanglements of love, ambition and family. Long-running figures such as Deniz Oeztuerk, played since 2007 by Igor Dolgatschew, have anchored fan-favourite storylines, including a landmark queer romance that won the soap national acclaim. Across thousands of episodes the series keeps returning to the same question its title poses: when sport, business and family collide, what is it that truly counts.
