BERLIN — Ilja Pankow didn’t dither when he read about the contest on his phone. He submitted an entry without hesitation. There was no doubt in his mind that he deserved the prize.

In fact, Pankow’s only moment of uncertainty arrived when he found out that he had won.

“I thought: Oh, no. It’s real,” he said, using somewhat more colorful language. “And then I thought: Uh oh. I’m getting a tattoo.”

This year, Hertha Berlin, the top professional soccer team in the city, unveiled an unusual promotional contest with an unorthodox prize: an ostentatious tattoo embedded with a data matrix bar code that serves as a scannable, lifetime ticket to the team’s home games.

The club asked fans to prove they deserved the honor, and Pankow, 31, a credit assistant with Mercedes-Benz from Berlin, sent a two-minute video showing his collection of 30 signed jerseys, photographs of trips he had taken to watch the team on the road and other material evidence of his fandom. He called Hertha, nicknamed the Old Lady, the love of his life. And he offered, as an additional sweetener in his argument, “I’m a tattoo virgin.”