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Cake day: November 16th, 2023

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  • As a German football fan, I think that the boredom of our league and the decline of many traditional clubs with huge fandoms is the price that we pay for our relatively strict investment rules: At least 50% of a professional club have to be owned by a Verein: Very simply spoken, a Verein in German civil law is a non-profit organization more or less democratically run by its members. The only exception to that rule are clubs that are traditionally linked to a cooperation (the so-called Leverkusen clause). In the last years that rule has been avoided either by founding a Verein pro forma or by investing in a club for long enough that the Leverkusen clause becomes valid.

    This rule has a big advantages: It prevents our clubs from becoming too dependent on investors, so that our league is still the German football championship and not the UAE wealth championship. It has a lot of disadvantages though: Due to a lack of money, many German clubs cannot afford world class players anymore and even mediocre EPL clubs can pay more than big Bundesliga clubs. And there is a risk of „too much democracy“ which can lead to decisions that are rather populist than based on sports expertise. Even Bayern and Dortmund are often shockingly chaotic in their leadership. Many of the presidents/patriarchs of the clubs have become memes.

    This led to the decline of many big, traditional clubs from big cities: Only 5 out of 16 state capitals currently have a Bundesliga side, the second-largest city in the county hasn’t had a Bundesliga side since 2018, cities like Cologne, Frankfurt and even Berlin have had seasons without a Bundesliga side as well. Schalke, which has been one of the top clubs in the country only about 20 years ago, is now fighting against relegation to the 3rd division - and against bankruptcy. And that are only a few examples. On the other hand, we have lots of small, but well-run clubs that have developed from amateur to Bundesliga in the last decade.