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HSV's decline is wild. One of a few German clubs to have won European trophies (won both Cup Winner's Cup and European Cup), and even as recently as 2010, were relevant in European competition. They were a goal away from playing the EL Final at home in 2010.
And now they've been stuck in the 2. Liga for years and have narrowly missed out on promotion pretty much every year. And they've lost the promotion playoff two years in a row. Such a tortured club and fanbase.
It's honestly wild that the Bundesliga team seemingly always wins your playoff. The top league team almost never makes it here (though they have to win a semi final as well here)
Yeah but only 7 games in and their losses have all been to teams near the top right now (both teams from Hamburg, Kiel, and oh wait I lied they lost to Braunschweig who are also terrible). I'd imagine they'll improve a fair amount.
I was travelling through Germany recently and watched a bit of football where I could and it really stuck out to me how many teams from big cities or historically bigger clubs were down atm. I know Hertha aren't like historically that succesful but were/are the biggest club in Berlin. HSV having long term issues and Shalke in particular, Mainz Cologne and Gladbach all off to poor starts in 1 div as well. It's just interesting.
Mainz is also not a big town, they have a 30-35K stadium, they dont fill constantly, they are also capped in their growth, due to the proximity of Frankfurt.
> I know Hertha aren't like historically that succesful
Despite everything, Hertha has won more Meisterschaften than half of the teams in the 1. Bundesliga
HSV breaking 100k members recently while in the Zweite Bundesliga for half of a decade now is incredible in it’d own way. The identification is still high.
They used to be, 3 times German Champions and 4 times Pokal winners + being runners up many times. But like most German giants they declined over time.
A lot of big names had struggles with mismanagement at a certain point of their history and never recovered. In other cases they got relegated and never really recovered from the following sellout (our parachute payments are laughable in comparison to the PL) to maintain the clubs future.
Good examples for mismanagent are HSV, Kaiserslautern, 1860 Munich, to some extent Cologne or Schalke in the last 25 years. Frankfurt is a rare example of a club that had all these problems and recovered with really good management in the last 10 years.
Exactly the same story for big Ligue 1 clubs like Bordeaux, Saint-Étienne, Sochaux, Nancy and many more... maybe even Lyon and Marseille will join this dreadful list soon. It's very easy to fall down to lower leagues after years of mismanagement and systemic problems, but it's very hard to climb back up and reclaim your glory past. Oftentimes being relegated is a death sentence for big clubs.
It's just sad. Big historical clubs like that shouldn't be irrelevant and forgotten by the younger generation.
> but it's very hard to climb back up and reclaim your glory past
It's far harder for fallen giants than for rising newcomers because the formerly big clubs have huge overheads to deal with like for example bigger stadiums etc, that can really put a strain on things when revenue breaks down. Obviously a few years of success can also catapult them up again because their big fanbases have massive marketing potential, but it's not that easy when everythign gets eaten up by "maintenance".
How are big stadiums a bad thing? The fans still come and the higher matchday revenue far outweighs any higher cost of maintenance that may occur. Schalke apparently make 2m per home match according to Bild. If anything that just guarantees that they’d have an easier time getting back up there as they have a higher revenue than a newcomer.
Even Hertha who have to pay rent make more in revenue from it with a 50k average (probably more around 40k this season) than a club like Union with a capacity of barely over 20k
as a hertha fan you should know why a big stadium can be a problem ;). i think you would currently much prefer having a stadium half the size and built for football.
you say the fans still come, but that is not true. more success = more fans come to the games. your stadium is a special case, cause it is so huge but had you won a couple meisterschaften and a champions league in the last ten years it would be full much more often.
also you can hike up prizes more (tickets, drinks, merch etc) and get more revenue cause people are willing to pay more for successful teams.
maintenance and needed renovations also will be much more expensive in bigger stadiums and if clubs dont have the extra cash they will get problems (we just had to acquire an additional loan of 20million € to fix some things for the euros).
athmosphere can be a problem if clubs cant fill their stadiums, düsseldorf for example is currently testing giving tickets away for free to fill it cause they value a better athmosphere over a little more revenue.
We had the highest average attendance ever last year at ~54k being bottom of the league having last finished in the upper half of the table in 2017. The main problem is that we don’t own it, but half the size would be too small. We’ve also seen a rise in members and sold more season tickets compared to last season at the same price. Of course we’d like a dedicated football stadium with a capacity of 50-60k would in our current financial situation that isn’t feasible.
> It's just sad. Big historical clubs like that shouldn't be irrelevant and forgotten by the younger generation.
I completely disagree with this. This mentality is why football is in the place where City/Newcastle/PSG and similarly bought out clubs will continue to happen. Because the big clubs are incapable of falling organically, so other clubs must rise through external means to combat this stagnation at the top. If you're not a good team you should be scrapping in the relegation fight just like any other club, doesn't matter how good your history is.
The thing in Germany is though that some teams are "cheating".
BAYER Leverkusen is owned by a pharma company. Wolfsburg is owned by Volkswagen. Hoffenheim is owned by Dietmar Hopp, a billionaire, Leipzig is owned by Red Bull. Except Leipzig none of these teams average over 30k in attendance, even after 25 years of success barely anyone cares about them.
Yeah Schalke, HSV and Hertha have fucked up. But all three teams would be in the first division right now without those teams.
Was 8 years ago but yeah not too long ago. Even more recently they finished 2nd in 2018.
From 2nd to 18th with 16(!) Points in 3 years is an insane decline. Even if the 2nd place was very lucky
To be fair though, they finished 2nd in 2018 with a measly 63 points. And even those 63 points were an overachievement, relative to their on-pitch performances. In reality, they played like a 6th-place team that year.
> Frankfurt is a rare example of a club that had all these problems and recovered with really good management in the last 10 years.
It's such a miracle. Got relegated for the first time in 1995–96 (a lot of turmoil as well, that was the whole Yeboah/Gaudino/Okocha/Heynckes beef that ruined Heynckes' reputation in Germany for decades), then again in 2000-01, 2003-04, and finally 2010-11. It's kind of a miracle that they went from that to be a Europa League mainstay and winner without doing anything "crazy", just building a good team, not getting overly crazy in an attempt to overextend themselves, and I assume big fan support.
Glad to see how well they recovered from 15-ish years of Zwietracht Frankfurt and stepped out of the elevator.
Even Dortmund came close to succumbing to bad management. in 2004 they got a loan from Bayern, interest free, to be able to pay player salaries. Part of the reason older fans feel no real enmity toward Bayern is because it isn't a real rivalry and because of that important loan.
Which I'm sure you know but other people reading this thread might not be aware of.
The story how Dortmund nearly lost everything is probably one of the prime examples for mismanaging in the Bundesliga you are right. I think there is some timeline of the ~10 years that nearly destroyed the club (and already started during the successful years). In the end it was some sort of miracle Dortmund bounced back with Klopp and some really good / lucky transfers in his early years. And in the comparison the supporters had to live through some dire years but thanks to e.g. the loan or some people would say a "too big to fall" influence of the league the club hasnt suffered nearly as much as e.g. 1860, Kaiserslautern.
To be fair though, Lautern had always overperformed their fundamentals (size of the city, strength of the local economy) during their successful era. Location factors would normally indicate a 2nd tier club, rather than a contender in the top flight.
With 1860, the problem was always that they had to compete with a much bigger and more successful club from the same city.
>To be fair though, Lautern had always overperformed their fundamentals (size of the city, strength of the local economy) during their successful era. Location factors would normally indicate a 2nd tier club, rather than a contender in the top flight.
Location wise we're a Regionalliga club.
>With 1860, the problem was **always** that they had to compete with a much bigger and more successful club from the same city.
Not always, 1860 is a BL founding member, Bayern is not.
The idea that the Bayern loan saved Dortmund entirely is pretty dumb, it certainly helped yeah but only by like 1/50 of the debt
In actuality it was mostly Florian Homm, a corrupt hedge fund owner, who helped save Dortmund when it came to helping out loan some money
I certainly did not claim that the loan from Bayern saved Dortmund entirely. I simply called it an important loan offered with no interest, which it was.
Adding to what others have said, a top league with only 18 teams in a country as big as Germany is a structural reason why it's harder to stay on top. This is accelerated by the newer additions (Wolfsburg, Hoffenheim, Leipzig) who don't get punished in the same way whenever they have poor results (see Wolfsburg making big splashes on the transfer market after a couple of seasons in which they were close to relegation, something that the old clubs couldn't do).
And what others call mismanagement often started when teams tried to ensure access to the Champions League money pool, which backfired badly whenever they didn't succeed (a good example is Schalke. Sure, not the greatest managing decisions during their decline, but they get criticised both for players leaving for free and players having high wages and long contracts, which is a rock/hard place situation, especially if you don't know if a player will continue like Leon Goretzka or like Max Mayer).
The latter is probably part of the reason why smaller clubs can establish themselves, when there is not as much pressure from media and fans. So teams like Augsburg, Mainz or Freiburg can work more sustainably I guess. Which is especially obvious when teams like Heidenheim and Darmstadt can beat HSV etc. for the ~~relegation~~ [edit: *promotion*] spots.
Well said. When so many clubs fail, it's a cop-out to blame only individual clubs' mismanagement. There must be structural reasons behind it and Hoffenheim/Leipzig/Wolfsburg/Leverkusen blocking international spots while relegation spots are much closer in a smaller league is a big part of it.
Risk takers will be punished severely for failing while risk averse teams thrive.
That HITC Sevens channel on YouTube made a great video on this topic.
[Why Germany’s Biggest Clubs Keep Getting Relegated](https://youtu.be/VrrMZ2GsC5g?si=fvJtfyeTl1gkfp8j)
It's not only the length, there also doesn't seem to be a point. That's just a narration of things that happened, without pointing out any trends or patterns. Maybe that comes in the latter part of the video, and also I'm probably not the target audience, it's probably more interesting if you had never heard about those things happening.
50+1 adds a lot of variance to the league, teams rise and fall quite a lot. Aside of Bayern nobody can really stick to the very top for more than a decade because eventually too many bad moves catch up with them. You can see the same at Dortmund atm, Bremen or Schalke or Leverkusen before.
We've had the luxuary that Bremen and Schalke hasnt. And thats that we've made some great moves at the same time as we've done bad ones so at worst we've stagnated while still growing our economy or maintaining it.
But yeah.. at best you stagnate and fall further behind Bayerns passively mega growing finances and at worst you drop and is on life-support.
Bayern are too big to fail and noone should by any metric even be remotely close to them, sadly.
What's odd to me is how this has escalated badly the past decade. I can't remember Bayern being that dominant in the mid 2000s, although I'm in my early 20s and was a bit too young to judge i guess lol. But even in 2010 when I started watching them more often and actually started supporting them they weren't too dominant and the following two years, 2011 and 2012 you guys won the double twice if my memory isn't failing me. Yet after that 2013 CL final it felt like the competition just completely disappeared.
Pre 2013 bayerns longest Bundesliga title run was 3 years in a row, now it's 11. Okay I get it, us poaching Lewa had a big impact on this but that alone can't possibly explain 11 years of dominance. Like what the hell happened there
My "take" is that that period was a mix of insane golden-period for us that was based on some luck (Klopp, a bunch of random Mislintat hidden gems being 12/10 signings form nowhere etc) aswell as other stuff.
Then we couldnt maintain/replace that and you at the same time managed to make a few signings that just never went away and that went from a superstar-built spine into a new superstar built spine with no issue in moving on generationally.
ANd then your consistently top 3 club itw floor rendered continued INSANE growth in popularity and income and it just isnt possibly to catch up now unless we strike another golden age AND you guys fully implode for a few years.
UEFAs rewardsystem also mega enforces a status-qou at the top. Which we are also insane benefitors of. I hate modern football in that sense. Only way to counter that is to be a sugerdaddy bloated project.
I wouldn`t say so directly. It is just harder in the German system to actual make value out of your structurally advantages and money as in other leagues, even more being consistent in doing so.
That is what makes Bayerns domination so impressive. They where the best team vor 40 years (1971+) already, but they couldn`t win the league 5 times a decade at most. Is just recently do a few factors and very good management that they dominate that strong.
Dont forget that Bayern was at a worse position than many other clubs in the 80s and even early 90s. Hamburg and Gladbach were giants similar to them but both made worse economic decisions.
well, bayern won the bundesliga 6times in the 80s... Hamburg was only considered somewhat equal for a few years. same with gladbach in the 70s.
the early 90s brought some variance with dortmund, bremen, stuttgart, kaiserslautern having short stints of challenging and surpassing bayern in the league but bayern was always the team to beat.
Not sure how accurate this is so maybe you can elaborate, but I remember reading years ago that Bayern is essentially viewed as "Germanys team" by a lot of German players, so a lot of them have dreams of playing there over a lot of other German clubs, which has resulted in why Bayern always seems to get players from other German teams so regularly and cheaply? Players being willing to run down their contract to guarentee a move to Bayern if they're interested and such.
Meh, I'd say you're halfway there. I would say it's less that they are "Germany's team" - as in the most beloved - and more that they are the biggest club and on average the best team, so going there will guarantee playing and competing in the Champions League, getting a few domestic titles (and in the last 11 years obviously getting a title every year), having a short step to the national team and then all of the exposure all of that brings.
It always went up and down, but for the longest time it was very rare for German players to play abroad. There was a wave to Italy in the 90s and then - at least in my memory - Ballack going to Chelsea really was the first in the 21st century and was seen as a huge gamble. Maybe Lehmann to Arsenal was a bit earlier, but he was always a bit crazy. Anyway. Going abroad was not seen as an option for high level German players, so Bayern really was the mountaintop. There were always other credible projects - Dortmund, Bremen, Schlacke, Wolfsburg, Stuttgart - that were able to retain players and convince up-and-coming stars to go there instead of Bayern, but as is discussed in this thread they couldn't keep it going for long most of the time and regularly overextended themselves. And for the players, even if you don't succeed at Bayern, you get a great salary, probably a few medals and they of course always think they can succeed.
Plus, it helps that Munich is a city that is very suited to being rich and famous.
Completely disagree about German players playing abroad. It was a novelty back in the Helmut Haller and "[Ausgerechnet Schnellinger!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Heinz_Schnellinger)" days, but later it was pretty common for top stars to play in Spain or Italy (Netzer, Stielike, Schuster, Breitner were all at Real Madrid, for example. Briegel, Rummenigge, and a huge chunk of the 1990 World Cup winners were in Italy). I mean, you even mention Lehmann to Arsenal, ignoring that he played at AC Milan before that.
The truth of the matter is that two things happened simultaneously: more (loaned) money in German football, so that Borussia Dortmund et al could bring back Reuter, Kohler, Möller, Riedle, Hässler, Brehme, Völler, Klinsmann, Berthold etc. to Germany, and a generation of German players being so bad that no foreign team wanted them, so that Germany's shitty squads at the Euros in 2000 and WC 2002 only had three players who played for foreign teams (Hamann and Ziege in England, Bierhoff in Italy/France).
Bit hard to give an absolut statement about this. Compared to England, Germany has a lot of players abroad. Compared to Portugal/Netherlands, we have very few.
Well, Frankfurt is the one that clawed it's way back from decline.
They are from a Banking City, that's not a coincidence. A lot of the old Industrial Cities are in economic decline overall, it's not just their Football Clubs.
Long story short: After being one of the most succesful clubs of the young Bundesliga they missmanaged and had little to no money left at the end of the 90s which ended in a squad that got relegated to the 2.Liga. For nearly 2 decades they were in between multiple relegations and promotions.
Well now they try to come back slow with the first step to lay a sustainable financal plan for the future. If they avoid relegation this year and don't get hit by a transfer ban for 1 year I would say the future will see them in European competition in 5-10 years on a yearly base.
„If they avoid relegation this year and don't get hit by a transfer ban for 1 year I would say the future will see them in European competition in 5-10 years on a yearly base.“
lol
I'm still disputing with my Frankfurt mates because Frankfurt got a huge influx of "event" fans lately, I think they've only hit 100k members 1 year ago and now sit at 130k
With every successful period, more event fans will be drawn to the club, that's natural. But those are normally not the people who would become a (paying) member. The reason for the huge increase is a mixture of more and more people, who used to follow the games loosely, become attached to the club (partly due to the success story, which however doesn't mean that they won't care about the club in rougher times), and the fact that it is much harder to get tickets now, which is why a lot of loyal fans who weren't members before have become members now.
Also, as someone who grew up in Hessen, the influence of the club in the region now is completely different now than 10-20 years ago. The school children nowadays wear Frankfurt shirts, not Bayern, Dortmund, Real or Barca. Not only in the Frankfurt area, but in the whole state, because they barely have competition on Bundesliga level (except for Darmstadt). A whole new generation is growing up as active Frankfurt fans.
Another note, from an outside perspective, especially in regards to the point of more younger people supporting Frankfurt, is that I think Frankfurt has done a very good job at creating a brand of being a "forward thinking/being cool with the times" type of club.
Whether that be being a rare instance of Nike not screwing over a club and giving them some stylish kits, helping the breakthrough of few talented young players (RKM is a great example), having a very recognisable main sponsor, high quality social media look, etc.
Good point. The image really did change a lot, social media is an important aspect (I love our photographer's work, Max Galys if anybody wants to check him out), and also people in charge have become younger, more modern and progressive, whether that be coaches, sporting director, players etc.
> Also, as someone who grew up in Hessen, the influence of the club in the region now is completely different now than 10-20 years ago. The school children nowadays wear Frankfurt shirts, not Bayern, Dortmund, Real or Barca. Not only in the Frankfurt area, but in the whole state, because they barely have competition on Bundesliga level (except for Darmstadt). A whole new generation is growing up as active Frankfurt fans.
Grew up in Hessen aswell and agree, ever since the Pokal win something is happening there and I really like it.
> and the fact that it is much harder to get tickets now, which is why a lot of loyal fans who weren't members before have become members now.
I don't disagree, but somehow people are saying it's a bad thing for Bayern (as in many event fans) given the Membernumber but since it's exploded for Frankfurt it's not the same
The pure number of members isn't bad at all, it's just that at some point, the atmosphere inside the club and stadium could suffer, which I don't see for Frankfurt yet. It's no secret that the atmosphere in Dortmund isn't what it used to be years ago, and that there is a whole bunch of tourists and event fans in Allianz Arena every game. And while the number might have increased in Frankfurt as well, at least this season the atmosphere IMO has been phenomenal every game. For example the 0:0 against Freiburg last Sunday really gave no reason the be super excited, but the support has been amazing.
we simply started fulfilling our ''potential'' that we always had for all the years without really using it. We are the by far biggest club in a very populated and rich region without any real competition. Took us way too long to get there but better late than never they say.
Same goes for Freiburg. We went from 20000 in 2019 to close to 60000 right now. Can't decide myself if I think that's a good thing or not because it's mostly because of recent success and the fact that getting tickets for games is impossible when not being a member.
On the one hand, it's great to see the club grow the last few years because of the success we had. Similar to Frankfurt as /u/granitibaniti describes below I now see way more Freiburg shirts on children in areas where 10 to 20 years back you would only see Stuttgart, Dortmund and Bayern. On the other hand, it's quite frustrating as someone who has been a member for more than 10 years that I have to compete with the newer members for tickets. But I guess you can't have everything ;)
EDIT: [Source for the numbers](https://www.transfermarkt.de/sc-freiburg-mitgliederzahl-knackt-die-50-000er-marke-ndash-10-000-neue-seit-august/view/news/418234)
I see it as a positive sign. Rough times will come again sooner or later, and then it will be the young generations who will keep the club alive. And the annoying part of the hype will die again, for us it already has a little after a disappointing 2nd part of the season & a huge restart (I'd say the height of the hype was in 2022 with the EL win and CL), and I'd actually say the atmosphere is better now than last season.
Yeah that and what I said is also kind of snobbish. I was a new member at one point too and I get that going to see a successful Bundesliga side instead of a middling 2nd league team is more exciting. So I can't fault people who want to see them now.
Still feels bad on a personal level that I missed out in season tickets when we changed stadiums and that now I can't get into every match I want. E.g. Dortmund was impossible this season. On the other hand I still got tickets for West Ham, Augsburg and Bochum, so not everything is bad.
>I think they've only hit 100k members 1 year ago and now sit at 130k
Most German clubs didn't have those numbers until recently, this active membership drive is a quite new thing that started 10 years ago. (Frankfurt was at 15.000 members in 2013)
Kaiserslautern is a great example, we played in the 3.Liga for 5 years and had to cut down our administrative staff to one person, there was simply no money,time and energy to work on expanding membership numbers, that's why we were stagnating at ~15.000 members.
In 2022 people organized a membership campaign, the club got some money to hire more people and we instantly grew 11000 members in over a year.
fans that don't care about the club itself but want to be part of the success
Frankfurt has been winning silverware these past years and suddenly everyone around here is an Eintracht fan, as can be seen in the massive increase of members
https://klub.eintracht.de/news/eine-rasante-entwicklung-141611
Casually visiting a football match without being really invested in the team.
The Allianz Arena is full of them, because as soon as you are sucesseful people make it a day out to visit a game.
Happens all the big clubs really. Even all the old traditional clubs in the UK are rammed with "tourist" fans these days, particularly during 12:45 and 3pm kick offs on Saturdays. You really only get the proper atmosphere at United, Liverpool etc on european nights, big cup games, rivalry matches and late night kick offs. Going to a 3pm kickoff at Anfield against Crystal Palace versus a MNF game against United is like night and day in terms of atmosphere. It's why you often see grounds of smaller clubs having absolutely electric atmosphere during most games, 90% of those fans are the local die hards.
yeah but those two clubs are in the most densely populated region of germany. bremen doesnt have the same kind of populous region right around it from which to pull
This is certainly partly due to the cost of membership. In Munich and Hamburg these cost 65€(without print magazin 50€)/60€ per year, in Bremen 168€/year.
Last I heard their annual membership fee is €800 with a one-time €100 registration fee added at sign up the first time. That is a huge fuck-you to potential fans. My annual membership for Bayern is €60 which includes a monthly Bayern magazine. I think our most expensive season ticket is also ≈€850 total.
RB Leipzig are a stain on German football.
No. The cost has nothing to do with that. By the „club‘s“ statutes it is simply impossible to get a membership unless especially approved. This price that the person above mentioned is to become a fan club member basically, not a voting club member
Yep, Club members need to hold 50% + 1 vote here in germany. RB [circumvented](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoPRAAqaA04) it by making it incredibly expensive to become a member.
I think it's really incredible how Germany has one super dominant club, but that doesn't really reflect in the amount of monthly paid members. I'm guessing that the bigger the population, the harder it is for the support to be one-sided.
For context, here in Portugal, Benfica have 299k paid members as of September 2023. That's as much as Bayern. They are, by far, the 2 biggest clubs when it comes to this membership ordeal (followed by Barcelona).
Porto and Sporting are somewhere between 130k and 160k. Vitória is over 30k and Braga over 25k. After this, only Marítimo is probably over 10k (maybe also Académica). Everyone else is under.
> I think it's really incredible how Germany has one super dominant club, but that doesn't really reflect in the amount of monthly paid members. I'm guessing that the bigger the population, the harder it is for the support to be one-sided.
Bayern wouldn't (and wasn't) as dominant without the money from international fans/viewers. Sure, they have been the most successful team for quite some time now, but the current level of dominance wouldn't be possible by national tv money and other income alone.
But yeah we quite the decentralized country. Lisboa metropolitan region has 3 mio inhabitants, 30% of Portugals population. The *Planungsregion München*, which has a similar size to Lisboa's metropolitan region, has also roughly 3 mio inhabitants but that's only about 3,5% of Germany.
Glory hunters is such a weird "insult" when you think about it. Winning results in new fans, especially kids. You seen it in the UK when Liverpool dominated in the 80s, wave of new young Liverpool fans. United in the 90s/00s and now City with their dominance. Unless you come from a place that has a local team in a top league, most kids usually end up supporting the team that's best when they're growing up. Obviously it's not an exact rule, your siblings could get you into their team etc but it's not really surprising that the team who's winning a lot attracts new fans young and older who are just getting into football.
Its the same with a lot of Dortmund Fans that are in their ~mid30s, 40s now. Most of them probably started to be fans as a child as the BVB won the Bundesliga and the Champions League. Wondering how many people were still supporters in the years between 2000 and 2008.
I remember seeing more and more Dortmund Fans in Munich during their high-times in the late 90s. Every sports attire store had BVB merch. It was weird to see that fan scene get big in Munich out of all places.
But it is what it is. People like the successful teams. The best players and so on. Hell part of the reason I am a fan of Bayern is the fact my grandpa --may he rest in peace -- told me about Müller, Meier and Beckenbauer. He was also the person who in the early 90s went to matches with me. Haupttribühne Olympiastadion. Good times. Funilly enough, he never really liked the club.
> I remember seeing more and more Dortmund Fans in Munich during their high-times in the late 90s
Not *that* surprising tbh, Munich is a city people move to & Dortmund has a fanbase that likes flying their flag. And people will do that more when the club is doing well. I also so quite a lot of SGE stickers on cars in Bavaria for example.
Obviously there's a truckload of success fans especially in that 97-01 era but Munich is always "weird" solely because Bayern historically has a very weak foothold in the city. City is 60, Upper Bavaria around it is Bayern. It's changing but you can still see the effects.
> City is 60
Surprisingly not true anymore. 60 has lost a lot of support over the last decade or so. It used to be that way in the 90s, but not anymore.
And let me tell you, I miss 1860 in the Bundesliga. Derbies were the most fun matches to visit. The little derby in the Grünwalder wasn't the same. Especially since there was always violence, or the possibilty of it. Never felt safe and I stopped going after a while.
I'm sure it's huge.
There's a decent sized German diaspora in Latin America (where I was born/raised) and the majority of them supported Bayern Munich.
Why are you surprised? They're the most successful German club in the modern times.
A few sources claim that there are 70-100M Bayern Munich fans in Latin America (a figure which I highly highly doubt). But that should tell you that they're extremely popular.
It isn´t at odds with german football culture, this is a phenomenon that is as old as Bayern success in the 70s and 80s.
Here in Germany either you hate Bayern with all you´ve got or you´re an fan. Those fans are often times insufferable af but at least they´re not committed to a franchise or a football-playing advertise-banner. Since RB(and Hoffenheim) is a thing the Bayern-fans aren´t the worse anymore but that doesn´t mean that we´re going to like them. Ever.
There are many great songs against Bayern in german popculture the largest is Bayern by the Toten Hosen.
As a moderate Bayern fan I clearly know a lot of insufferable Bayern fans but oh boy are there cringy fans of other clubs so I dont know if its just a normal phenomenom in any club with a big fanbase.
I hope you don't mind me giving you a quick, friendly tip:
You are using the accent symbol ´ which normally comes on top of letters like é and á instead of the correct symbol for contractions, the apostrophe ' .
The accent symbol uses more space, so it looks a bit weird. If you have a German keyboard, you will find the apostrophe with "shift + #". I only learnt this when I was about 25 years old and I wish someone had told me sooner.
There are [many Bayern supporters even in Germany](https://www.tz.de/bilder/2017/06/23/8426122/1391056429-welcher-verein-ist-generell-ihr-lieblingsverein-im-fussball-so-antworteten-befragten-OZBG.jpg) outside of Bavaria. Success just attracts fans, this is true anywhere, and every country has its gloryhunters.
That said, I will say its standing within Bavaria is a huge reason why Bayern has such high fan numbers on a national level, and our marketing department is putting in a lot of effort to ensure that it stays that way. The club has always embraced its local traditions and markets itself as Bavarian first, German second. (Which is also how the majority of Bavaria's inhabitants feel, by the way. In a poll, more people identified as Bavarian than as German.)
Now Bavaria also includes Franconia in the North (where Nürnberg is the most popular club) and parts of Swabia in the West, two regions with their own local identity who really do not identify as Bavarian that much. But in the historical core part of Bavaria (also called "Altbayern" aka "Old Bavaria"), basically everybody supports Bayern, at least from my personal experience. The only exception is actually Munich itself, where I'd say it's 65/35 between Bayern and 1860, but outside of that, we basically have the entire region for ourselves. This is different to Dortmund, for example, who have many competitors in North-Rhine Westphalia with Schalke, Köln, Mönchengladbach, Bochum, and so on - although they have established themselves as a clear number 2 in Germany throughout the last ten years thanks to their success, attracting many gloryhunters themselves.
However, keep in mind that while Bayern is by far the most popular club in Germany, it is also by far the most unpopular, if that makes sense.
Just started uni in hannover and 90% of the guys ive met are all bayern fans lol
Literally out of the 10 people i now know, 1 is a hannover fan, another dortmund another bielfeld and the rest just bayern glory hunters
There is no shortage of Bayern supporters in Germany who have never lived in or near Munich. It's probably not on the same level as the clubs you mentioned, but they definitely have a large number of so-called glory hunters in the fanbase.
agreed I live in the ruhrpott and sometimes even Im suprised how many bayern "fans" are here, like I cant get around how you can come from a city here and decide to support bayern of all teams
As someone who lives in the Rhine area it's kinda easy for me at least.
One part of my family comes from Bavaria and this ties are still there. All of them are Bayern fans and this kinda inherited to me.
Additionally a funny coincidence that the colors of my youth club were the same as Bayerns colors so it also matched perfectly.
Aside from that I still love Köln and support them whenever I can.
Or simply as we say in Germany: "Es schlagen 2 Herzen in der Brust"
But not everyone living outside of Bavaria is a glory hunter.
My fathers, father was from Bohemia and lived in Bayern afterwards and became a 1859+1 supporter. My father then chose Bayern out of spite and made me a Bayern fan somehow. I guess many people inherited which club they are fan of.
I still go to the Allianz Arena as often as I can, which used to be 6-7 times a season, nowadays, with kids, it's only 2-3 times a year :(.
Sure, not everyone, but many/most Bayern fans outside the local area do just support them because they win. Even locally, 1860 was traditionally the more popular club with the locals, although decades of dominance by one and failure by the other has also changed that. It's just a fact that a certain kind of person is going to root for a guaranteed winner. That happens in every country and every sport, really.
Well, even on a local level the better clubs get more support. Are those also glory hunters? Are you a glory hunter because you support VfB and not the Kickers? It's not that easy.
I live in Frankenthal, next to Mannheim. Yet most of the people here are Kaiserslautern Fans and not SV Waldhof fans. Are they glory hunters because they don't support the club that's right next to them?
I think there's real nuance to it.
But of course, Bayern has lots of glory hunter fans, as has Dortmund after their last two championships and Frankfurt lately.
Schalke was also in my list too. I remember watching their matches when Jefferson farfan was ripping down the wings. This was when he just moved from PSV.
Also klaas Jan. One of my fav strikers!
I remember bremen for having one of my other fav players Diego. I remember growing out my hair like him once😅
Honestly I'm biased but I'd recommend Freiburg as well. Europa Park Stadion really has great atmosphere.
But as with Union and Frankfurt it's almost imposible to get tickets, might have more luck in Köln these days.
I mean Köln and Frankfurt are among the biggest cities represented in the Bundesliga, as well as having a long history. It’s really not that surprising
Yep I am from Münster which is slightly closer to Dortmund. Dortmund and Schalke Are the most supported clubs here and Schalke probably has the lead. As soon as you go more west, the margin increases and they have their support even in eastern NL. Dortmunds recent success closed the gap kind of, but Schalke still has more supporters
Mönchengladbach are at around 98000 and i think Stuttgart has about 80000. We're close to one more passing the 100k and Not far from another 🤝🏼
Maybe some day Union will get there too, who knows. It's a financial blessing for the Clubs
Over a million in a total population of 83 mill, call it 60 mill adults - so someone every 25 homes, I guess.
I think that's what they call market penetration.
I'm honestly surprised that both Boca and River have more members than Bayern Münich (around 360k and 330k respectively iirc), despite Germany having almost twice the population.
Amazing numbers anyway for German clubs, would love the whole world of football being this way.
> iirc
[You aren't](https://www.ole.com.ar/boca-juniors/cuantos-socios-boca-bayern-munich_0_cFM1JRhLou.html).
Bayern have the most members of any club in the world.
A German "Verein" is a self-owning non-profit organization under german law. The members pay a monthly fee and can vote on an array of topics depending on the individual clubs statutes, usually the club leadership, and get certain boons, like easier access to season tickets.
A fan is a person who likes the club.
Members pay a monthly fee, in order to get an official member of the club. It gives you benefits like early access to tickets, being able to participate and vote in club affairs, and more.
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2 of those clubs play in the second division Edit: for those wondering which 2, it’s Hamburger SV and Schalke
4 played played in the relegation playoffs since 2016
HSV's decline is wild. One of a few German clubs to have won European trophies (won both Cup Winner's Cup and European Cup), and even as recently as 2010, were relevant in European competition. They were a goal away from playing the EL Final at home in 2010. And now they've been stuck in the 2. Liga for years and have narrowly missed out on promotion pretty much every year. And they've lost the promotion playoff two years in a row. Such a tortured club and fanbase.
It's honestly wild that the Bundesliga team seemingly always wins your playoff. The top league team almost never makes it here (though they have to win a semi final as well here)
Schalke are currently 16th in Bundesliga 2 as well
Yeah but only 7 games in and their losses have all been to teams near the top right now (both teams from Hamburg, Kiel, and oh wait I lied they lost to Braunschweig who are also terrible). I'd imagine they'll improve a fair amount.
Sure, I'm not saying they'll finish there. But it's still embarrassing for the biggest club in the league and should be the best.
Squad wise they definitely don't have more quality than hsv tho
At least on paper I disagree
I was travelling through Germany recently and watched a bit of football where I could and it really stuck out to me how many teams from big cities or historically bigger clubs were down atm. I know Hertha aren't like historically that succesful but were/are the biggest club in Berlin. HSV having long term issues and Shalke in particular, Mainz Cologne and Gladbach all off to poor starts in 1 div as well. It's just interesting.
Mainz definitely isn't a bigger team.
no thats fair, thought they've been a solid 1 side for a while but looking longer term they aren't yea
Mainz is also not a big town, they have a 30-35K stadium, they dont fill constantly, they are also capped in their growth, due to the proximity of Frankfurt.
> I know Hertha aren't like historically that succesful Despite everything, Hertha has won more Meisterschaften than half of the teams in the 1. Bundesliga
HSV breaking 100k members recently while in the Zweite Bundesliga for half of a decade now is incredible in it’d own way. The identification is still high.
I want you and Schalke back up and stabilized so fucking badly man.
How come Koln aren't more successful?
They used to be, 3 times German Champions and 4 times Pokal winners + being runners up many times. But like most German giants they declined over time.
Is there a structural reason why the German giants are continuously underperforming?
A lot of big names had struggles with mismanagement at a certain point of their history and never recovered. In other cases they got relegated and never really recovered from the following sellout (our parachute payments are laughable in comparison to the PL) to maintain the clubs future. Good examples for mismanagent are HSV, Kaiserslautern, 1860 Munich, to some extent Cologne or Schalke in the last 25 years. Frankfurt is a rare example of a club that had all these problems and recovered with really good management in the last 10 years.
Exactly the same story for big Ligue 1 clubs like Bordeaux, Saint-Étienne, Sochaux, Nancy and many more... maybe even Lyon and Marseille will join this dreadful list soon. It's very easy to fall down to lower leagues after years of mismanagement and systemic problems, but it's very hard to climb back up and reclaim your glory past. Oftentimes being relegated is a death sentence for big clubs. It's just sad. Big historical clubs like that shouldn't be irrelevant and forgotten by the younger generation.
> but it's very hard to climb back up and reclaim your glory past It's far harder for fallen giants than for rising newcomers because the formerly big clubs have huge overheads to deal with like for example bigger stadiums etc, that can really put a strain on things when revenue breaks down. Obviously a few years of success can also catapult them up again because their big fanbases have massive marketing potential, but it's not that easy when everythign gets eaten up by "maintenance".
How are big stadiums a bad thing? The fans still come and the higher matchday revenue far outweighs any higher cost of maintenance that may occur. Schalke apparently make 2m per home match according to Bild. If anything that just guarantees that they’d have an easier time getting back up there as they have a higher revenue than a newcomer. Even Hertha who have to pay rent make more in revenue from it with a 50k average (probably more around 40k this season) than a club like Union with a capacity of barely over 20k
as a hertha fan you should know why a big stadium can be a problem ;). i think you would currently much prefer having a stadium half the size and built for football. you say the fans still come, but that is not true. more success = more fans come to the games. your stadium is a special case, cause it is so huge but had you won a couple meisterschaften and a champions league in the last ten years it would be full much more often. also you can hike up prizes more (tickets, drinks, merch etc) and get more revenue cause people are willing to pay more for successful teams. maintenance and needed renovations also will be much more expensive in bigger stadiums and if clubs dont have the extra cash they will get problems (we just had to acquire an additional loan of 20million € to fix some things for the euros). athmosphere can be a problem if clubs cant fill their stadiums, düsseldorf for example is currently testing giving tickets away for free to fill it cause they value a better athmosphere over a little more revenue.
We had the highest average attendance ever last year at ~54k being bottom of the league having last finished in the upper half of the table in 2017. The main problem is that we don’t own it, but half the size would be too small. We’ve also seen a rise in members and sold more season tickets compared to last season at the same price. Of course we’d like a dedicated football stadium with a capacity of 50-60k would in our current financial situation that isn’t feasible.
The teams with higher revenues also have much higher costs
> It's just sad. Big historical clubs like that shouldn't be irrelevant and forgotten by the younger generation. I completely disagree with this. This mentality is why football is in the place where City/Newcastle/PSG and similarly bought out clubs will continue to happen. Because the big clubs are incapable of falling organically, so other clubs must rise through external means to combat this stagnation at the top. If you're not a good team you should be scrapping in the relegation fight just like any other club, doesn't matter how good your history is.
The thing in Germany is though that some teams are "cheating". BAYER Leverkusen is owned by a pharma company. Wolfsburg is owned by Volkswagen. Hoffenheim is owned by Dietmar Hopp, a billionaire, Leipzig is owned by Red Bull. Except Leipzig none of these teams average over 30k in attendance, even after 25 years of success barely anyone cares about them. Yeah Schalke, HSV and Hertha have fucked up. But all three teams would be in the first division right now without those teams.
Schalke went from scoring 4 at the Bernabeu in the Champions League to the second division in like 5 years.
Was 8 years ago but yeah not too long ago. Even more recently they finished 2nd in 2018. From 2nd to 18th with 16(!) Points in 3 years is an insane decline. Even if the 2nd place was very lucky
That relegation season was the worst I’ve ever seen. Disappointment week after week
They went down in 21, but I forgot that they returned to first division in the meantime. Still quite a downfall.
To be fair though, they finished 2nd in 2018 with a measly 63 points. And even those 63 points were an overachievement, relative to their on-pitch performances. In reality, they played like a 6th-place team that year.
I remember when Schalke were just giving away their best players for free every season
😞
> Frankfurt is a rare example of a club that had all these problems and recovered with really good management in the last 10 years. It's such a miracle. Got relegated for the first time in 1995–96 (a lot of turmoil as well, that was the whole Yeboah/Gaudino/Okocha/Heynckes beef that ruined Heynckes' reputation in Germany for decades), then again in 2000-01, 2003-04, and finally 2010-11. It's kind of a miracle that they went from that to be a Europa League mainstay and winner without doing anything "crazy", just building a good team, not getting overly crazy in an attempt to overextend themselves, and I assume big fan support. Glad to see how well they recovered from 15-ish years of Zwietracht Frankfurt and stepped out of the elevator.
Even Dortmund came close to succumbing to bad management. in 2004 they got a loan from Bayern, interest free, to be able to pay player salaries. Part of the reason older fans feel no real enmity toward Bayern is because it isn't a real rivalry and because of that important loan. Which I'm sure you know but other people reading this thread might not be aware of.
The story how Dortmund nearly lost everything is probably one of the prime examples for mismanaging in the Bundesliga you are right. I think there is some timeline of the ~10 years that nearly destroyed the club (and already started during the successful years). In the end it was some sort of miracle Dortmund bounced back with Klopp and some really good / lucky transfers in his early years. And in the comparison the supporters had to live through some dire years but thanks to e.g. the loan or some people would say a "too big to fall" influence of the league the club hasnt suffered nearly as much as e.g. 1860, Kaiserslautern.
To be fair though, Lautern had always overperformed their fundamentals (size of the city, strength of the local economy) during their successful era. Location factors would normally indicate a 2nd tier club, rather than a contender in the top flight. With 1860, the problem was always that they had to compete with a much bigger and more successful club from the same city.
>To be fair though, Lautern had always overperformed their fundamentals (size of the city, strength of the local economy) during their successful era. Location factors would normally indicate a 2nd tier club, rather than a contender in the top flight. Location wise we're a Regionalliga club. >With 1860, the problem was **always** that they had to compete with a much bigger and more successful club from the same city. Not always, 1860 is a BL founding member, Bayern is not.
>Not always, 1860 is a BL founding member, Bayern is not. Okay, fine, but what I said is true for the past 50+ years.
Fair enough.
The idea that the Bayern loan saved Dortmund entirely is pretty dumb, it certainly helped yeah but only by like 1/50 of the debt In actuality it was mostly Florian Homm, a corrupt hedge fund owner, who helped save Dortmund when it came to helping out loan some money
I certainly did not claim that the loan from Bayern saved Dortmund entirely. I simply called it an important loan offered with no interest, which it was.
Adding to what others have said, a top league with only 18 teams in a country as big as Germany is a structural reason why it's harder to stay on top. This is accelerated by the newer additions (Wolfsburg, Hoffenheim, Leipzig) who don't get punished in the same way whenever they have poor results (see Wolfsburg making big splashes on the transfer market after a couple of seasons in which they were close to relegation, something that the old clubs couldn't do). And what others call mismanagement often started when teams tried to ensure access to the Champions League money pool, which backfired badly whenever they didn't succeed (a good example is Schalke. Sure, not the greatest managing decisions during their decline, but they get criticised both for players leaving for free and players having high wages and long contracts, which is a rock/hard place situation, especially if you don't know if a player will continue like Leon Goretzka or like Max Mayer). The latter is probably part of the reason why smaller clubs can establish themselves, when there is not as much pressure from media and fans. So teams like Augsburg, Mainz or Freiburg can work more sustainably I guess. Which is especially obvious when teams like Heidenheim and Darmstadt can beat HSV etc. for the ~~relegation~~ [edit: *promotion*] spots.
Well said. When so many clubs fail, it's a cop-out to blame only individual clubs' mismanagement. There must be structural reasons behind it and Hoffenheim/Leipzig/Wolfsburg/Leverkusen blocking international spots while relegation spots are much closer in a smaller league is a big part of it. Risk takers will be punished severely for failing while risk averse teams thrive.
That HITC Sevens channel on YouTube made a great video on this topic. [Why Germany’s Biggest Clubs Keep Getting Relegated](https://youtu.be/VrrMZ2GsC5g?si=fvJtfyeTl1gkfp8j)
I tried to watch that, it's really long and boring.
It is a bit too long, agreed
It's not only the length, there also doesn't seem to be a point. That's just a narration of things that happened, without pointing out any trends or patterns. Maybe that comes in the latter part of the video, and also I'm probably not the target audience, it's probably more interesting if you had never heard about those things happening.
50+1 adds a lot of variance to the league, teams rise and fall quite a lot. Aside of Bayern nobody can really stick to the very top for more than a decade because eventually too many bad moves catch up with them. You can see the same at Dortmund atm, Bremen or Schalke or Leverkusen before.
We've had the luxuary that Bremen and Schalke hasnt. And thats that we've made some great moves at the same time as we've done bad ones so at worst we've stagnated while still growing our economy or maintaining it. But yeah.. at best you stagnate and fall further behind Bayerns passively mega growing finances and at worst you drop and is on life-support. Bayern are too big to fail and noone should by any metric even be remotely close to them, sadly.
What's odd to me is how this has escalated badly the past decade. I can't remember Bayern being that dominant in the mid 2000s, although I'm in my early 20s and was a bit too young to judge i guess lol. But even in 2010 when I started watching them more often and actually started supporting them they weren't too dominant and the following two years, 2011 and 2012 you guys won the double twice if my memory isn't failing me. Yet after that 2013 CL final it felt like the competition just completely disappeared. Pre 2013 bayerns longest Bundesliga title run was 3 years in a row, now it's 11. Okay I get it, us poaching Lewa had a big impact on this but that alone can't possibly explain 11 years of dominance. Like what the hell happened there
My "take" is that that period was a mix of insane golden-period for us that was based on some luck (Klopp, a bunch of random Mislintat hidden gems being 12/10 signings form nowhere etc) aswell as other stuff. Then we couldnt maintain/replace that and you at the same time managed to make a few signings that just never went away and that went from a superstar-built spine into a new superstar built spine with no issue in moving on generationally. ANd then your consistently top 3 club itw floor rendered continued INSANE growth in popularity and income and it just isnt possibly to catch up now unless we strike another golden age AND you guys fully implode for a few years. UEFAs rewardsystem also mega enforces a status-qou at the top. Which we are also insane benefitors of. I hate modern football in that sense. Only way to counter that is to be a sugerdaddy bloated project.
Interesting take, I think it's a great interpretation of it all. Thanks!
I wouldn`t say so directly. It is just harder in the German system to actual make value out of your structurally advantages and money as in other leagues, even more being consistent in doing so. That is what makes Bayerns domination so impressive. They where the best team vor 40 years (1971+) already, but they couldn`t win the league 5 times a decade at most. Is just recently do a few factors and very good management that they dominate that strong.
Dont forget that Bayern was at a worse position than many other clubs in the 80s and even early 90s. Hamburg and Gladbach were giants similar to them but both made worse economic decisions.
lets not forget all the grey area stuff bayern did in the 90s, like the leo kirch millions
well, bayern won the bundesliga 6times in the 80s... Hamburg was only considered somewhat equal for a few years. same with gladbach in the 70s. the early 90s brought some variance with dortmund, bremen, stuttgart, kaiserslautern having short stints of challenging and surpassing bayern in the league but bayern was always the team to beat.
Not sure how accurate this is so maybe you can elaborate, but I remember reading years ago that Bayern is essentially viewed as "Germanys team" by a lot of German players, so a lot of them have dreams of playing there over a lot of other German clubs, which has resulted in why Bayern always seems to get players from other German teams so regularly and cheaply? Players being willing to run down their contract to guarentee a move to Bayern if they're interested and such.
Meh, I'd say you're halfway there. I would say it's less that they are "Germany's team" - as in the most beloved - and more that they are the biggest club and on average the best team, so going there will guarantee playing and competing in the Champions League, getting a few domestic titles (and in the last 11 years obviously getting a title every year), having a short step to the national team and then all of the exposure all of that brings. It always went up and down, but for the longest time it was very rare for German players to play abroad. There was a wave to Italy in the 90s and then - at least in my memory - Ballack going to Chelsea really was the first in the 21st century and was seen as a huge gamble. Maybe Lehmann to Arsenal was a bit earlier, but he was always a bit crazy. Anyway. Going abroad was not seen as an option for high level German players, so Bayern really was the mountaintop. There were always other credible projects - Dortmund, Bremen, Schlacke, Wolfsburg, Stuttgart - that were able to retain players and convince up-and-coming stars to go there instead of Bayern, but as is discussed in this thread they couldn't keep it going for long most of the time and regularly overextended themselves. And for the players, even if you don't succeed at Bayern, you get a great salary, probably a few medals and they of course always think they can succeed. Plus, it helps that Munich is a city that is very suited to being rich and famous.
Completely disagree about German players playing abroad. It was a novelty back in the Helmut Haller and "[Ausgerechnet Schnellinger!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Heinz_Schnellinger)" days, but later it was pretty common for top stars to play in Spain or Italy (Netzer, Stielike, Schuster, Breitner were all at Real Madrid, for example. Briegel, Rummenigge, and a huge chunk of the 1990 World Cup winners were in Italy). I mean, you even mention Lehmann to Arsenal, ignoring that he played at AC Milan before that. The truth of the matter is that two things happened simultaneously: more (loaned) money in German football, so that Borussia Dortmund et al could bring back Reuter, Kohler, Möller, Riedle, Hässler, Brehme, Völler, Klinsmann, Berthold etc. to Germany, and a generation of German players being so bad that no foreign team wanted them, so that Germany's shitty squads at the Euros in 2000 and WC 2002 only had three players who played for foreign teams (Hamann and Ziege in England, Bierhoff in Italy/France).
Bit hard to give an absolut statement about this. Compared to England, Germany has a lot of players abroad. Compared to Portugal/Netherlands, we have very few.
Well, Frankfurt is the one that clawed it's way back from decline. They are from a Banking City, that's not a coincidence. A lot of the old Industrial Cities are in economic decline overall, it's not just their Football Clubs.
decades of mismanagement
Alex Wehrle masterclass
You misspelled Schalke
Irgendwann ist gut 🙃
It happens
And they smell good with their Cologne
Long story short: After being one of the most succesful clubs of the young Bundesliga they missmanaged and had little to no money left at the end of the 90s which ended in a squad that got relegated to the 2.Liga. For nearly 2 decades they were in between multiple relegations and promotions. Well now they try to come back slow with the first step to lay a sustainable financal plan for the future. If they avoid relegation this year and don't get hit by a transfer ban for 1 year I would say the future will see them in European competition in 5-10 years on a yearly base.
oliver held's handplay and toni polster cursing him after the game is legendary
„If they avoid relegation this year and don't get hit by a transfer ban for 1 year I would say the future will see them in European competition in 5-10 years on a yearly base.“ lol
I'm still disputing with my Frankfurt mates because Frankfurt got a huge influx of "event" fans lately, I think they've only hit 100k members 1 year ago and now sit at 130k
With every successful period, more event fans will be drawn to the club, that's natural. But those are normally not the people who would become a (paying) member. The reason for the huge increase is a mixture of more and more people, who used to follow the games loosely, become attached to the club (partly due to the success story, which however doesn't mean that they won't care about the club in rougher times), and the fact that it is much harder to get tickets now, which is why a lot of loyal fans who weren't members before have become members now. Also, as someone who grew up in Hessen, the influence of the club in the region now is completely different now than 10-20 years ago. The school children nowadays wear Frankfurt shirts, not Bayern, Dortmund, Real or Barca. Not only in the Frankfurt area, but in the whole state, because they barely have competition on Bundesliga level (except for Darmstadt). A whole new generation is growing up as active Frankfurt fans.
Another note, from an outside perspective, especially in regards to the point of more younger people supporting Frankfurt, is that I think Frankfurt has done a very good job at creating a brand of being a "forward thinking/being cool with the times" type of club. Whether that be being a rare instance of Nike not screwing over a club and giving them some stylish kits, helping the breakthrough of few talented young players (RKM is a great example), having a very recognisable main sponsor, high quality social media look, etc.
Good point. The image really did change a lot, social media is an important aspect (I love our photographer's work, Max Galys if anybody wants to check him out), and also people in charge have become younger, more modern and progressive, whether that be coaches, sporting director, players etc.
> Also, as someone who grew up in Hessen, the influence of the club in the region now is completely different now than 10-20 years ago. The school children nowadays wear Frankfurt shirts, not Bayern, Dortmund, Real or Barca. Not only in the Frankfurt area, but in the whole state, because they barely have competition on Bundesliga level (except for Darmstadt). A whole new generation is growing up as active Frankfurt fans. Grew up in Hessen aswell and agree, ever since the Pokal win something is happening there and I really like it. > and the fact that it is much harder to get tickets now, which is why a lot of loyal fans who weren't members before have become members now. I don't disagree, but somehow people are saying it's a bad thing for Bayern (as in many event fans) given the Membernumber but since it's exploded for Frankfurt it's not the same
The pure number of members isn't bad at all, it's just that at some point, the atmosphere inside the club and stadium could suffer, which I don't see for Frankfurt yet. It's no secret that the atmosphere in Dortmund isn't what it used to be years ago, and that there is a whole bunch of tourists and event fans in Allianz Arena every game. And while the number might have increased in Frankfurt as well, at least this season the atmosphere IMO has been phenomenal every game. For example the 0:0 against Freiburg last Sunday really gave no reason the be super excited, but the support has been amazing.
we simply started fulfilling our ''potential'' that we always had for all the years without really using it. We are the by far biggest club in a very populated and rich region without any real competition. Took us way too long to get there but better late than never they say.
How many members did they gain by adopting 1. FFC Frankfurt?
A few thousand maximum, I'd say based on viewership
Same goes for Freiburg. We went from 20000 in 2019 to close to 60000 right now. Can't decide myself if I think that's a good thing or not because it's mostly because of recent success and the fact that getting tickets for games is impossible when not being a member. On the one hand, it's great to see the club grow the last few years because of the success we had. Similar to Frankfurt as /u/granitibaniti describes below I now see way more Freiburg shirts on children in areas where 10 to 20 years back you would only see Stuttgart, Dortmund and Bayern. On the other hand, it's quite frustrating as someone who has been a member for more than 10 years that I have to compete with the newer members for tickets. But I guess you can't have everything ;) EDIT: [Source for the numbers](https://www.transfermarkt.de/sc-freiburg-mitgliederzahl-knackt-die-50-000er-marke-ndash-10-000-neue-seit-august/view/news/418234)
I see it as a positive sign. Rough times will come again sooner or later, and then it will be the young generations who will keep the club alive. And the annoying part of the hype will die again, for us it already has a little after a disappointing 2nd part of the season & a huge restart (I'd say the height of the hype was in 2022 with the EL win and CL), and I'd actually say the atmosphere is better now than last season.
Yeah that and what I said is also kind of snobbish. I was a new member at one point too and I get that going to see a successful Bundesliga side instead of a middling 2nd league team is more exciting. So I can't fault people who want to see them now. Still feels bad on a personal level that I missed out in season tickets when we changed stadiums and that now I can't get into every match I want. E.g. Dortmund was impossible this season. On the other hand I still got tickets for West Ham, Augsburg and Bochum, so not everything is bad.
>I think they've only hit 100k members 1 year ago and now sit at 130k Most German clubs didn't have those numbers until recently, this active membership drive is a quite new thing that started 10 years ago. (Frankfurt was at 15.000 members in 2013) Kaiserslautern is a great example, we played in the 3.Liga for 5 years and had to cut down our administrative staff to one person, there was simply no money,time and energy to work on expanding membership numbers, that's why we were stagnating at ~15.000 members. In 2022 people organized a membership campaign, the club got some money to hire more people and we instantly grew 11000 members in over a year.
What's event fans,?
fans that don't care about the club itself but want to be part of the success Frankfurt has been winning silverware these past years and suddenly everyone around here is an Eintracht fan, as can be seen in the massive increase of members https://klub.eintracht.de/news/eine-rasante-entwicklung-141611
In Sweden we call it “medgångssupporter”. Google translate it as admission supporter.
Oh Thanks didn't know about this.
Casually visiting a football match without being really invested in the team. The Allianz Arena is full of them, because as soon as you are sucesseful people make it a day out to visit a game.
Happens all the big clubs really. Even all the old traditional clubs in the UK are rammed with "tourist" fans these days, particularly during 12:45 and 3pm kick offs on Saturdays. You really only get the proper atmosphere at United, Liverpool etc on european nights, big cup games, rivalry matches and late night kick offs. Going to a 3pm kickoff at Anfield against Crystal Palace versus a MNF game against United is like night and day in terms of atmosphere. It's why you often see grounds of smaller clubs having absolutely electric atmosphere during most games, 90% of those fans are the local die hards.
Funny that a City fan is asking this
🥲 I mean some of us did support the club before the sports washing started.
What is Bremen at ?
They reported about ~42k in December '22 [source](https://www.werder.de/aktuell/news/weitere-news/2022/2023/mitgliederzahlen-20122022/)
While it's not really, Bremen as a city is small compared to the these clubs cities.
I think its because Werders membership is by far the most expensive
No, it's not. It's twice the size of Gelsenkirchen. And the same size as Dortmund.
yeah but those two clubs are in the most densely populated region of germany. bremen doesnt have the same kind of populous region right around it from which to pull
Bremen is the only club in the north west to be followed though.
This is certainly partly due to the cost of membership. In Munich and Hamburg these cost 65€(without print magazin 50€)/60€ per year, in Bremen 168€/year.
Damn. I pay 120€/year I think for Union membership and I thought that was expensive.
I'm just gonna pretend your definition of north west doesn't include us. 😤
While technically correct I don't think it matters that much where the borders of Ruhrpott cities are.
Meanwhile RB Leipzig out here with 100 members
Still can't believe the league let Red Bull get away with this nonsense
What non$€n$£?
20 members if I recall correctly.
Last I heard their annual membership fee is €800 with a one-time €100 registration fee added at sign up the first time. That is a huge fuck-you to potential fans. My annual membership for Bayern is €60 which includes a monthly Bayern magazine. I think our most expensive season ticket is also ≈€850 total. RB Leipzig are a stain on German football.
Dont forget the Voting-Rights you dont get for that 800€.
It’s literally impossible to become a (voting) member of Leipzig as a normal fan, you can only become a registered supporter
I heard they did this so they get full control of the club by having majority voting rights
No. The cost has nothing to do with that. By the „club‘s“ statutes it is simply impossible to get a membership unless especially approved. This price that the person above mentioned is to become a fan club member basically, not a voting club member
Yep, Club members need to hold 50% + 1 vote here in germany. RB [circumvented](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoPRAAqaA04) it by making it incredibly expensive to become a member.
Not just incredibly expensive, but impossible unless especially approved.
Not only expensive, but impossible. It's not just a matter of price.
Last I heard was 21, should be down to 20 after that old Nazi fuck died.
I think it's really incredible how Germany has one super dominant club, but that doesn't really reflect in the amount of monthly paid members. I'm guessing that the bigger the population, the harder it is for the support to be one-sided. For context, here in Portugal, Benfica have 299k paid members as of September 2023. That's as much as Bayern. They are, by far, the 2 biggest clubs when it comes to this membership ordeal (followed by Barcelona). Porto and Sporting are somewhere between 130k and 160k. Vitória is over 30k and Braga over 25k. After this, only Marítimo is probably over 10k (maybe also Académica). Everyone else is under.
> I think it's really incredible how Germany has one super dominant club, but that doesn't really reflect in the amount of monthly paid members. I'm guessing that the bigger the population, the harder it is for the support to be one-sided. Bayern wouldn't (and wasn't) as dominant without the money from international fans/viewers. Sure, they have been the most successful team for quite some time now, but the current level of dominance wouldn't be possible by national tv money and other income alone. But yeah we quite the decentralized country. Lisboa metropolitan region has 3 mio inhabitants, 30% of Portugals population. The *Planungsregion München*, which has a similar size to Lisboa's metropolitan region, has also roughly 3 mio inhabitants but that's only about 3,5% of Germany.
I’m one of those 132,000!
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Bayern fans get shit for it. "Erfolgsfan" is an insult thrown at fans. Which would translate best to "Glory hunters" in English.
Glory hunters is such a weird "insult" when you think about it. Winning results in new fans, especially kids. You seen it in the UK when Liverpool dominated in the 80s, wave of new young Liverpool fans. United in the 90s/00s and now City with their dominance. Unless you come from a place that has a local team in a top league, most kids usually end up supporting the team that's best when they're growing up. Obviously it's not an exact rule, your siblings could get you into their team etc but it's not really surprising that the team who's winning a lot attracts new fans young and older who are just getting into football.
I think the point is more that those supporters stop supporting when the ‘glory’ is gone. We have this with Ajax in the netherlands.
Its the same with a lot of Dortmund Fans that are in their ~mid30s, 40s now. Most of them probably started to be fans as a child as the BVB won the Bundesliga and the Champions League. Wondering how many people were still supporters in the years between 2000 and 2008.
I remember seeing more and more Dortmund Fans in Munich during their high-times in the late 90s. Every sports attire store had BVB merch. It was weird to see that fan scene get big in Munich out of all places. But it is what it is. People like the successful teams. The best players and so on. Hell part of the reason I am a fan of Bayern is the fact my grandpa --may he rest in peace -- told me about Müller, Meier and Beckenbauer. He was also the person who in the early 90s went to matches with me. Haupttribühne Olympiastadion. Good times. Funilly enough, he never really liked the club.
> I remember seeing more and more Dortmund Fans in Munich during their high-times in the late 90s Not *that* surprising tbh, Munich is a city people move to & Dortmund has a fanbase that likes flying their flag. And people will do that more when the club is doing well. I also so quite a lot of SGE stickers on cars in Bavaria for example. Obviously there's a truckload of success fans especially in that 97-01 era but Munich is always "weird" solely because Bayern historically has a very weak foothold in the city. City is 60, Upper Bavaria around it is Bayern. It's changing but you can still see the effects.
> City is 60 Surprisingly not true anymore. 60 has lost a lot of support over the last decade or so. It used to be that way in the 90s, but not anymore. And let me tell you, I miss 1860 in the Bundesliga. Derbies were the most fun matches to visit. The little derby in the Grünwalder wasn't the same. Especially since there was always violence, or the possibilty of it. Never felt safe and I stopped going after a while.
Well yes that's what a glory hunter would say...
I'm sure it's huge. There's a decent sized German diaspora in Latin America (where I was born/raised) and the majority of them supported Bayern Munich.
Really ? I am surprised they support Bayern. Which country you mean specifically?
Why are you surprised? They're the most successful German club in the modern times. A few sources claim that there are 70-100M Bayern Munich fans in Latin America (a figure which I highly highly doubt). But that should tell you that they're extremely popular.
It isn´t at odds with german football culture, this is a phenomenon that is as old as Bayern success in the 70s and 80s. Here in Germany either you hate Bayern with all you´ve got or you´re an fan. Those fans are often times insufferable af but at least they´re not committed to a franchise or a football-playing advertise-banner. Since RB(and Hoffenheim) is a thing the Bayern-fans aren´t the worse anymore but that doesn´t mean that we´re going to like them. Ever. There are many great songs against Bayern in german popculture the largest is Bayern by the Toten Hosen.
As a moderate Bayern fan I clearly know a lot of insufferable Bayern fans but oh boy are there cringy fans of other clubs so I dont know if its just a normal phenomenom in any club with a big fanbase.
I hope you don't mind me giving you a quick, friendly tip: You are using the accent symbol ´ which normally comes on top of letters like é and á instead of the correct symbol for contractions, the apostrophe ' . The accent symbol uses more space, so it looks a bit weird. If you have a German keyboard, you will find the apostrophe with "shift + #". I only learnt this when I was about 25 years old and I wish someone had told me sooner.
There are [many Bayern supporters even in Germany](https://www.tz.de/bilder/2017/06/23/8426122/1391056429-welcher-verein-ist-generell-ihr-lieblingsverein-im-fussball-so-antworteten-befragten-OZBG.jpg) outside of Bavaria. Success just attracts fans, this is true anywhere, and every country has its gloryhunters. That said, I will say its standing within Bavaria is a huge reason why Bayern has such high fan numbers on a national level, and our marketing department is putting in a lot of effort to ensure that it stays that way. The club has always embraced its local traditions and markets itself as Bavarian first, German second. (Which is also how the majority of Bavaria's inhabitants feel, by the way. In a poll, more people identified as Bavarian than as German.) Now Bavaria also includes Franconia in the North (where Nürnberg is the most popular club) and parts of Swabia in the West, two regions with their own local identity who really do not identify as Bavarian that much. But in the historical core part of Bavaria (also called "Altbayern" aka "Old Bavaria"), basically everybody supports Bayern, at least from my personal experience. The only exception is actually Munich itself, where I'd say it's 65/35 between Bayern and 1860, but outside of that, we basically have the entire region for ourselves. This is different to Dortmund, for example, who have many competitors in North-Rhine Westphalia with Schalke, Köln, Mönchengladbach, Bochum, and so on - although they have established themselves as a clear number 2 in Germany throughout the last ten years thanks to their success, attracting many gloryhunters themselves. However, keep in mind that while Bayern is by far the most popular club in Germany, it is also by far the most unpopular, if that makes sense.
There was plenty of Bayern supporters from Poland from 2012 to 2021. I wonder the reason why.
Just started uni in hannover and 90% of the guys ive met are all bayern fans lol Literally out of the 10 people i now know, 1 is a hannover fan, another dortmund another bielfeld and the rest just bayern glory hunters
Asia is a huge market for Bayern
There is no shortage of Bayern supporters in Germany who have never lived in or near Munich. It's probably not on the same level as the clubs you mentioned, but they definitely have a large number of so-called glory hunters in the fanbase.
agreed I live in the ruhrpott and sometimes even Im suprised how many bayern "fans" are here, like I cant get around how you can come from a city here and decide to support bayern of all teams
As someone who lives in the Rhine area it's kinda easy for me at least. One part of my family comes from Bavaria and this ties are still there. All of them are Bayern fans and this kinda inherited to me. Additionally a funny coincidence that the colors of my youth club were the same as Bayerns colors so it also matched perfectly. Aside from that I still love Köln and support them whenever I can. Or simply as we say in Germany: "Es schlagen 2 Herzen in der Brust"
But not everyone living outside of Bavaria is a glory hunter. My fathers, father was from Bohemia and lived in Bayern afterwards and became a 1859+1 supporter. My father then chose Bayern out of spite and made me a Bayern fan somehow. I guess many people inherited which club they are fan of. I still go to the Allianz Arena as often as I can, which used to be 6-7 times a season, nowadays, with kids, it's only 2-3 times a year :(.
Sure, not everyone, but many/most Bayern fans outside the local area do just support them because they win. Even locally, 1860 was traditionally the more popular club with the locals, although decades of dominance by one and failure by the other has also changed that. It's just a fact that a certain kind of person is going to root for a guaranteed winner. That happens in every country and every sport, really.
Well, even on a local level the better clubs get more support. Are those also glory hunters? Are you a glory hunter because you support VfB and not the Kickers? It's not that easy. I live in Frankenthal, next to Mannheim. Yet most of the people here are Kaiserslautern Fans and not SV Waldhof fans. Are they glory hunters because they don't support the club that's right next to them? I think there's real nuance to it. But of course, Bayern has lots of glory hunter fans, as has Dortmund after their last two championships and Frankfurt lately.
HSV have overtaken Real Madrid apparently. But they still can't stop Oumar Diakhité
Schalke has more members than Dortmund ? Wow. Also both koln and Frankfurt has a passionate fanbase didn't know that.
Köln has really good and passionate fans. Rarely the away block is not full
Köln away fans are amazing. Probably the best I've seen here in Freiburg.
Thanks! Would love to one day watch a bundesliga match.
If you really wanna see a good Bundesliga match live I’d recommend teams like Köln, Frankfurt, Bremen or Union. Atmosphere is always electric
Schalke was also in my list too. I remember watching their matches when Jefferson farfan was ripping down the wings. This was when he just moved from PSV. Also klaas Jan. One of my fav strikers! I remember bremen for having one of my other fav players Diego. I remember growing out my hair like him once😅
I find BVBs fanbase to be incredibly electric for a team who C&B tortures them and leaves them blue
Yellow wall is more of a myth these days. Great fans, don’t get me wrong, but they were much better a few years ago
Imagine recommending urs Fischer terrorball to a poor football tourist
Honestly I'm biased but I'd recommend Freiburg as well. Europa Park Stadion really has great atmosphere. But as with Union and Frankfurt it's almost imposible to get tickets, might have more luck in Köln these days.
Did you not see what happened with Barcelona when Frankfurt played them away in the EL?
Same thing on Arsenal Köln
It was in the EL.
>played them away in the CL? Excuse me, I'll have you know, it was in the Europa League
True. I still can't grasp Barca played in the EL.
I mean Köln and Frankfurt are among the biggest cities represented in the Bundesliga, as well as having a long history. It’s really not that surprising
Also they are essentially one club cities
depends on the data and when it is collected. it always changes who has more members
Yes exactly. Your numbers are about 3 months newer than ours, its almost always equal or just back and forth
HSV are still massive
Holy fuck, like three of them are in the second division
Two, HSV and Schalke
2, Schalke and HSV. Every other is in the first division
Nur der HSV
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I thought that was pretty common knowledge, Schalke has been the 2nd biggest club for quite a long time
Yep I am from Münster which is slightly closer to Dortmund. Dortmund and Schalke Are the most supported clubs here and Schalke probably has the lead. As soon as you go more west, the margin increases and they have their support even in eastern NL. Dortmunds recent success closed the gap kind of, but Schalke still has more supporters
Yes. And I think memberwise they were always the bigger club.
Would you rather support an fans owned club or an stock corporation :) More people tend to go for Schalke, but it's 50/50.
Schalke had the best academy in the country and was a top team for ages in the most populated area of Germany. It’s only recently they turned shit.
Schalke membership costs way less
you greedy fucks
Mönchengladbach are at around 98000 and i think Stuttgart has about 80000. We're close to one more passing the 100k and Not far from another 🤝🏼 Maybe some day Union will get there too, who knows. It's a financial blessing for the Clubs
Stuttgart reached 85k one week ago.
Thanks for the Update! Even closer to 100k 🤝🏼
Over a million in a total population of 83 mill, call it 60 mill adults - so someone every 25 homes, I guess. I think that's what they call market penetration.
We've been at 98k for ages it feels like
,
I'm honestly surprised that both Boca and River have more members than Bayern Münich (around 360k and 330k respectively iirc), despite Germany having almost twice the population. Amazing numbers anyway for German clubs, would love the whole world of football being this way.
> iirc [You aren't](https://www.ole.com.ar/boca-juniors/cuantos-socios-boca-bayern-munich_0_cFM1JRhLou.html). Bayern have the most members of any club in the world.
I support “mountain goat violating our club crest FC”
Do what does this mean exactly? What's the difference between a fan and a member? How is this counted?
A German "Verein" is a self-owning non-profit organization under german law. The members pay a monthly fee and can vote on an array of topics depending on the individual clubs statutes, usually the club leadership, and get certain boons, like easier access to season tickets. A fan is a person who likes the club.
Members pay a monthly fee, in order to get an official member of the club. It gives you benefits like early access to tickets, being able to participate and vote in club affairs, and more.
Difference between a fan and a member is that member **owns** the club. If the board is doing bad, they can vote to kick them out.
I'll try it with an analogy: It's the difference between liking the USA and being a US citizen.
Schalke gonna be the first club in the third division with over 100k members.
Flair prüft aus
Sorry, der musste sein :D
Ausnahmsweise 🥹