RB Leipzig qualified for the Champions League in its debut Bundesliga season.GETTY IMAGES
Billionaires have flooded int'l football in recent years, according to Iain Rogers of BLOOMBERG. While Germany has "largely missed the rush, that could be about to change." The German Football League (DFL) is "moving closer to allowing deep-pocketed investors to buy majority stakes in clubs, potentially gaining them more financial firepower to compete with cash-rich teams" like Man City, Chelsea and Paris St. Germain. It is a "contentious issue" that has "sparked protests by German fans who fear rising ticket prices and a loss of influence," but legal challenges and loopholes exploited by Red Bull and SAP SE tycoons are "forcing a rethink." Unlike most professional sports, German football teams are "generally controlled by associations made up of fee-paying members," rather than investors. The Bundesliga's so-called "50+1" rule requires the parent association to own more than 50% of a team's voting rights. Sports and antitrust lawyer Alexander Engelhard said, "The league always knew that this was a bit of a shaky rule so they decided to start an open debate about change." Engelhard added that given German and European Union laws on the free movement of capital, "they know they have to deal with this, and they want to deal with it." Opponents to allowing investor control say that there is "more at stake than wins and losses," pointing to the close bonds created by Germany’s "Verein" structure, which allows fans to "influence decision-making." Johannes Steiniger, a member of the German parliament's sports committee for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and a part-time football coach, said, "German football stands for a unique atmosphere in the stadiums, for which we are the envy of the world." However, it has become "increasingly evident that change is needed." A Jordanian investor in 1860 Munich filed a challenge to the ownership restrictions with Germany's Cartel Office last year, and a decision is still pending. Meanwhile, Austrian energy drink maker Red Bull, run by billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, "flouted the rule by founding its own member association, taking over a tiny eastern German club and building it into a new force in the Bundesliga." Last season, RB Leipzig qualified for the Champions League in its debut season in Germany's top division. Bayer Leverkusen Managing Dir Michael Schade said, "Clubs need new sources of finance to reduce the ever-widening gap to the top European teams. German soccer now has the chance to initiate the necessary reform to the investor rule and set out a legally sound framework" (BLOOMBERG, 3/22).
