Going to a match in England is very different
to how it was 30 years ago. In some ways,
that's a good thing. Ever since the Taylor
Report and the dawn of the Premier League,
stadiums have got better, safer and less violent.
Despite recent flare ups, overt racism, sexism
and homophobia are less overt than they used
to be. Women now attend the game in greater
numbers than before and English football generally
has a much more family-friendly vibe about
it. If you can afford it that is. Because
the price of that change has been high. Literally.
Ticket prices have rocketed, stadiums are
now all seater which have impacted on the
atmosphere, the demographic of football fans
in England has got older with each passing
year as young people are priced out of the
game. Football fans are policed as if each
one might be a terrorist threat, alcohol is
so tightly controlled that you can't drink
a pint within eyesight of the pitch and pretty
much anyone can buy or sell a football club
and do pretty much what they want regardless
of what the supporters think. The future of
football as an entertainment product cut loose
from its working class, community roots is
all but assured. Right?
Well, not neccesarily. Lessons can be learned
from Germany. It's become something a cliché
to look at club's in Germany's Bundesliga
and extol the virtues of their much more laid
back approach towards the supporters that
fill their stadiums. Stories of English fans
flying to Dortmund to stand in the Yellow
Wall, and still spending less money than a
trip to see their local English club, have
proliferated for years.
German football has low ticket prices – a
standing ticket at Borussia Dortmund's South
Stand costs 16 euro and 70 cents – safe
standing, incredible atmospheres created by
a young and vibrant crowd not priced out of
the game and whom, by and large, have a strong
voice within their clubs. Beer can be drunk
from you seat. Smoking is allowed in most
grounds too. But this doesn't happen just
because German clubs want it that way. It
happens because of German football's unique
ownership structure, the so called 50+1 model,
but more importantly because of the fans.
Supporter's are listened to in Germany and
supporter activism, organised within supporters
clubs and ultra groups, have fought for those
rights and continue to fight the commercialisation
of the game. In that respect, German supporter
activism is perhaps unique in world football,
not because of the noise that the supporters
can make when they are not happy, but because
of the success they have had in achieving
real results.
The reason why supporters have more say than
in England can be found in German football's
reluctance to professionalise. In England
football club's were always considered businesses
almost from the start. At the end of the 19th
century clubs took advantage of the new Limited
Liability Act to borrow money and build stadiums
of their own. But in Germany, clubs were membership
association whose stadiums were more often
than not built and owned by the local municipality.
Until the 1960s German football remained a
largely amateur sport where regional leagues
dominated. But in 1963 the German football
association voted to create its first nationwide
professional league, the Bundesliga. Membership
associations ran these clubs with a few notable
exceptions, namely Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg,
which had been set up and funded by the Bayer
pharmaceutical company and VW for their workers.
But in 1998 German football decided to allow
outside investors into the game for the first
time. The 50 plus one rule limited the potential
ownership, and control, by outside investors
effectively giving the membership final say.
So whilst ticket prices were rocketing along
with TV revenue in England, German clubs were
constrained in their commercial activities
and the game remained much more fan friendly.
And this activism can be seen in three main
areas. The preservation of the 50+1 rule is
seen as key to ensuring that football is organised
for the supporters. But there has been some
opposition to the rule, mainly from the big
clubs in Germany. Teams like Bayern Munich
fear falling behind financially to European
clubs bought by plutocrats and princes with
unlimited funds. Last year Bayern's chairman
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge called for its abolition:
“We are the last of the big five leagues
in Europe to keep out investors,” he said.
But the biggest critic has been Martin Kind,
a hearing aid magnate who has invested for
years in Hannover 96. For the past decade
he has turned to the courts, unsuccessfully,
to try and take over the club fully. He claims
that 50+1 entrenches a wealthy elite that
can never be challenged. “We should bury
50+1 and develop new regulations,” Kind
has said. The calls to end 50+1 intensify
when Bayern dominate the league as they did
last season. A vote was planned to be held
in April where it was thought Germany's clubs
would vote to change the rule. But German
fans sprung into action. Pro 50+1 banners
and tifos appeared in the terraces during
games, showing supporters' opposition to the
move. But that wasn't enough. One fan group
at SC Freiburg, combining with supporter groups
from Hannover, deeply unhappy with what Kind
was planning to do, announced a petition.
Which seems quite mild, but it provoked an
outpouring of support. 3000 membership organisations,
representing hundreds of thousands of fans,
signed up in support of 50+1. Just before
the vote was due to take place in Frankfurt,
fans from Freiburg and Hannover unrolled the
metres long petition next to the hall where
the vote would take place. Each club chairman
had to walk past it. The vote was defeated,
with the CEO of Borussia Dortmund conceding
that he could only vote against it because
the majority of his 150,000 or so members
were against it. So 50+1 stays, for now. And
the supporter groups forced a new transparency
in to the voting procedure to boot.
But another recent change has been the introduction
of Monday night football. Germany is a vast
country and travel to away games can take
a long time. Monday night football made it
almost impossible for many hardcore fans to
travel to see their team without taking days
off from work. It seemed to be introduced
not for the fans but for the TV companies..
So when it was introduced last season, the
fans revolted. There were, of course, tifos
like the famous Garfield “We Hate Mondays”
banner used by Werder Bremen. But also more
innovative protests. Borussia Dortmund emptied
its vast Yellow Wall for one game, a boycott
of 20,000 people, silencing the stadium. But
Eintracht Frankfurt supporters perhaps engaged
in the most famous protest, throwing thousands
of tennis balls on to the pitch before the
start of a game. Later they covered one of
the goals in toilet paper too. Eventually
the German football association decided they
were more trouble than they were worth. “The
DFL can confirm that a decision was made as
early as September to abandon Monday games
in the Bundesliga when the next media rights
deal is negotiated,” the German football
association announced on their Twitter feed.
Boycotts are a common theme, especially when
it comes to RB Leipzig. The club is, effectively,
bankrolled by the Red Bull empire, which would
appear to break German ownership rules. But
Red Bull got around the 50+1 rule in a cunning
way. RB Leipzig used to be a fifth-division
club called SSV Markranstadt but in 2009 Red
Bull bought the club and all its branding
and handed over a huge transfer war chest.
They flew up the divisions and managed to
satisfy the 50+1 by have a tiny membership
board that cost thousands of euros a year
to join. The club was run by a “membership”
organisation in spirit only. In reality it
was run by Red Bull employees. With every
new division protests followed. 15 minutes
of silence before a game. Away game boycotts.
Stands wearing all black ponchos. Dynamo Dresden
fans even threw a severed bulls head on to
the pitch. This season Borussia Dortmund again
announced it is boycotting the away game in
Leipzig. The club remain a pariah, which is
unlikely to change anytime soon.
There are a host of other issues that fans
have protested on, from anti-racism issues
to overly strong policing. But the forces
of international commerce are strong. Ultras
and supporter groups complain that the commercialisation
they fight against is creeping in through
the back door. Yet compared to England, which
has an anaemic reputation for direct action
in football, German supporters show that far
more powerful forces can be defeated, or at
least held at bay, through solidarity, organisation
and just sheer numbers. 2018 was a good year
for German supporter activism. But next year
they will have to do this all over again.
Because power and money never sleeps.
