For decades, a conflict has been simmering in German football over two strategic objectives that are proving difficult to reconcile: football should be preserved as a “cultural asset” and at the same time used as a commercial asset. In this debate, which has sometimes been hyped up into a culture war, there is hardly a topic that is discussed more emotionally and on which the advocates of unrestricted preservation of tradition attribute the success of their mission more fatefully than the 50+1 rule.
This rule, consistently described as “untouchable” by members of the active fan scenes, ensures that the respective parent clubs, with at least 51 percent of the voting shares, have a majority of votes in the corporations into which the majority of football clubs have spun off their professional teams. Since a league investor’s project recently failed and alternative ways of raising capital are now being sought, discussions about the usefulness of the 50+1 rule are likely to arise again.
