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Borussia Mönchengladbach fans in 2018
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Thomas Starke / Bongarts / Getty Images
It's about the big issues of sport: competition and justice.
The conflict that the German Football League (DFL) and the Federal Cartel Office are currently fighting with each other revolves around the question of who will be in charge of the Bundesliga.
And whether the Bundesliga will still be the way it is now.
And whether that's even good, if it stays that way.
It's about the 50 + 1 rule.
What is the dispute about?
50 + 1 - that is something like the creed of German professional football, and as with all questions of faith, 50 + 1 is accordingly controversial. The rule is to ensure that it is not investors but the clubs themselves that have the final say when it comes to their own interests. This also and especially applies when the professional departments are outsourced or transformed into corporations. In its assessment in spring, the Cartel Office described this structure as fundamentally harmless. So far, so good, so clear.
However, when the league introduced 50 + 1 in 1999, it opened a back door. The clubs in which investors, financiers, sponsors, whatever you call them, have been active for at least 20 years, are granted an exemption. It is clear who this is about: 1899 Hoffenheim with financier Dietmar Hopp, about VfL Wolfsburg with the VW group behind them and about the Bayer subsidiary from Leverkusen. The Red Bull Club from Leipzig does not fall under this exception rule: It has found other ways to circumvent the 50 + 1 rule.
This exemption is a thorn in the side of the Cartel Office.
According to information from the head of the authorities, Andreas Mundt, he fears that this will "thwart the DFL's own sporting policy objectives, which the DFL is pursuing with the 50 + 1 rule."
With the exceptions, the professional department decoupled itself too much from the "mother club", according to the competition watchdog.
Consistently thought, one would have to exclude clubs
The statement is clear: the exemptions for the three clubs violate 50 + 1.
Ultimately, if you follow the statements of the Cartel Office, you should actually exclude the trio from Hoffenheim, Wolfsburg and Leverkusen from the game.
Actually.
Nobody assumes that this will really happen.
The Cartel Office has asked the DFL to comment on this. This has now happened, as the "Kicker" and sportschau.de were the first to report at the weekend. At the request of both media, the DFL did not want to comment publicly on this. SPIEGEL has the league's 16-page paper. It vehemently defends the granting of exceptions to the three clubs.
The position of the DFL goes in the following direction: The balance of the league is not endangered by the exceptions.
You can see that just by how many different clubs have qualified for the European Cup in the past 20 years - and how often the three clubs concerned have missed their participation.
»In no other of the top European leagues have more clubs qualified for the Champions League or the Europa League than in the DFL e.
V. organized the Bundesliga «, it says in the DFL letter.
No descent as evidence
The Cartel Office had pointed out that Wolfsburg, Hoffenheim and Leverkusen have never been relegated since they were promoted to the top division - and is taking this as evidence that the three clubs are given an advantage.
The DFL, however, holds in its statement: "Since the three clubs have played in the Bundesliga, so since the 2008/2009 season, for example, FC Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Mönchengladbach have not been relegated from the Bundesliga."
The team from Gladbach only returned to the Bundesliga after two years in the second division in that 2008 season, and at that time they were promoted together with Hoffenheim.
On the other hand, both Hoffenheim 2013 and Wolfsburg 2017 and 2018 barely escaped relegation.
The DFL also does not see the fact that the investor clubs no longer have much or nothing to do with the original club as an argument against the exception rule: »Under the strict conditions of the funding exception, the club's purposes and values can be adequately preserved even without the parent club having a dominant influence . "
According to information from SPIEGEL, however, there were also divergent statements from individual clubs, in which the role of the three investor clubs was examined much more critically.
However, this position did not find a majority in the DFL.
50 + 1 now finally recognized
The trio from Hoffenheim, Wolfsburg and Leverkusen had drawn up an outraged letter shortly after the antitrust authorities had issued a statement in which they sharply criticized the authority's arguments.
The competition guardians had "not even rudimentarily" dealt with the guidelines of the DFL, it said.
The three clubs can live well with the current position of the league.
But the critics of investor football within the DFL are not dissatisfied either.
After all, there are also representatives of the small clubs from the 2nd division, which have completely different interests than Hoffenheim and Wolfsburg, sit on the DFL Presidium, including the Presidents of FC St. Pauli, Darmstadt 98 and Holstein Kiel.
From circles of the supposedly small clubs one hears satisfaction that 50 + 1 is now being established and recognized for the first time.
After all, individual clubs in the DFL have been sawing 50 + 1 again and again for years.
Martin Kind, the strong man at Hannover 96, did particularly well.
In the dispute with the Cartel Office, the DFL must now admit to 50 + 1.
This is a sensitive damper for children and the like.
Two scenarios
But how are you going now?
There are basically two options. The more improbable: The Cartel Office rejects the DFL's position in full bloom and threatens to impose sanctions. Hoffenheim, Bayer and Wolfsburg have already announced legal action in this case - in which they would fundamentally put 50 + 1 to the test. That would drag on for years, nobody involved is really interested in it.
Another scenario is more realistic: In the end, it is agreed that there will be no such exceptions in the future.
The three clubs that have benefited so far, however, largely get away with it.
And as a model of the Bundesliga, 50 + 1 is thus secured for the time being.
So that all actors could save face.
In its statement, the DFL has already indicated »possibilities and forms of grandfathering for exemptions that have already been granted«.
It would be conceivable as a kind of compromise to put the three clubs affected by the exception in a slightly worse position in the future when it comes to the distribution of television money, in order to put the cartel office at ease.
But all of this is still completely open.
The fact that Hoffenheim, Wolfsburg and Leverkusen play in the Bundesliga has now been accepted by the critics, albeit with a sigh.
Especially with a view to the Premier League, in which there are completely different faults because something like 50 + 1 does not exist there.
The entry of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund into Newcastle United is just the latest example.
One way or another, the inequality of the league persists.
The clubs that have been making money in the Champions League over the years increase the gap between them and the rest of the professional clubs year after year.
In any case, FC Bayern doesn't need to worry about possible exceptions to the 50 + 1 rule in order to rule the Bundesliga at will.
