The 50+1 rule explained: who owns German clubs, and the exceptions

The 50+1 rule means an investor can own shares in a German professional club but cannot control it: where a club has moved its professional team into a company, the members' club behind it must keep more than half of the votes. It applies to all 36 clubs of the Bundesliga and the 2. Bundesliga, and it is in the news again because in August the Bundeskartellamt, Germany's competition authority, closed an eight-year review that left the rule standing but asked the league to change how it is applied, and fan groups are demanding that the clubs commit to it before the league's general assembly in December. What follows is based on § 8 of the statute of the Bundesliga e.V., the league association, in the version of 1 July 2026, and on the Bundeskartellamt's decision of 12 August 2026.

What does the 50+1 rule say?

It is a condition of the licence that every club needs to play in the top two divisions, and it has two parts. A club that plays as a registered members' association must be legally independent, meaning no other entity can exercise a controlling or jointly controlling influence over it, and it must have its own football department (§ 8 No. 2).

Many clubs have instead moved their professional team into a company, which can then sell shares. Such a company gets a licence only if a members' club, the parent club, holds a majority in it, and the parent club must itself be independent in the same sense (§ 8 No. 3). The statute defines the majority precisely: more than 50 per cent of the votes in the shareholders' meeting plus at least one more vote. That is where the name comes from.

Does the majority mean most of the shares?

Not necessarily. The statute measures the parent club's majority by votes in the shareholders' meeting, not by its share of the capital, so what matters is that the club keeps more than half of the votes. In one legal form it may even have less than half of both.

That is the special case in the statute. In a partnership limited by shares, a KGaA in German law, the parent club or a subsidiary it controls 100 per cent must be the general partner, the partner that runs the company. The parent club may then hold less than 50 per cent of the votes, provided its position is otherwise comparable to that of a majority shareholder, which means above all that the general partner's legal powers to represent and manage the company are not restricted.

The same paragraph also stops one club owning part of another: licensed clubs and companies may not hold a direct or indirect stake in another licensed company of the two leagues. A company that runs a club's marketing must also be majority-owned by the club if it signs marketing contracts in its own or the club's name, unless the club has to approve each contract in advance.

Who is exempt, and why?

The statute allows an exception, known in German as the Förderausnahme, for an investor who has supported the club's football continuously and substantially for more than 20 years. The Präsidium, the league's board, decides on it. The investor must go on supporting the club's amateur football to the same extent, and may not sell its shares to anyone else: they can only be handed back to the parent club free of charge. Selling them in breach of that, or refusing to hand them back, costs the company its licence.

Two clubs hold such an exemption today, Bayer Leverkusen, backed by the chemicals group Bayer, and VfL Wolfsburg, backed by Volkswagen. According to dpa, Leverkusen's exemption dates from 1999 and Wolfsburg received its exemption in 2001. 1899 Hoffenheim had one from 2015 because of the backing of Dietmar Hopp and returned to the standard 50+1 structure at the end of 2023; the Bundeskartellamt confirmed in June 2025 that it no longer falls under the exception.

Why did the competition authority get involved?

Because the rule limits who can invest in professional clubs, it restricts competition, and it needs an exemption from competition law, for example because it pursues a legitimate public-interest objective, and does so consistently. In 2018 the league itself asked the Bundeskartellamt to declare that there were no grounds to act against the rule, a step that gives an organisation a degree of legal certainty.

The review took eight years. In mid-2021 the authority's preliminary view was that the rule could be exempt from competition law on its own, but not together with the exemption for long-standing investors. In spring 2023 the league offered to delete that exemption from its statute while protecting the clubs that already had one. In December 2023 three judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in the Super League, ISU and Royal Antwerp cases, set out how competition law applies to the rules of sports bodies, and the authority reassessed the case in their light. It published a preliminary assessment in June 2025 and closed the proceeding on 12 August 2026.

What did the Bundeskartellamt decide?

That the rule can stay. In its words, the aim of keeping the club character of the sport and letting members take part continues to justify it, on condition that it is applied consistently and without distinctions that cannot be objectively justified. Its president, Andreas Mundt, stressed that this was not a proceeding to prohibit the rule and that none would be opened. The authority found three shortcomings:

• Open membership. The league's licensing does not sufficiently ensure that every club in the two divisions lets fans join as full voting members. The closing letter adds that a club may set reasonable conditions for membership, and that the fee must stay affordable for a broad public; it describes, without naming it, a club that for a long time had only a few voting members and was still treated as independent.
• The league's own votes. In the December 2023 vote on bringing an investor into the league's media revenue, the league knew that the parent club of Hannover 96 had instructed the club's managing director, Martin Kind, to vote against, but did not check whether he followed the instruction. That right to give instructions was exactly why the league had treated Hannover 96 as complying with 50+1.
• The exemptions. Deleting the exemption for long-standing investors would remove the unequal treatment, but the league's plan to protect Leverkusen and Wolfsburg in the long term is not enough. In the longer term, a parent club open to new members should have a similar ability to influence the professional team as at every other club.

What happens next?

That is for the clubs to decide. The authority set no deadline and prescribed no particular wording, but said a longer transition period may be appropriate. Among the measures its letter lists are writing the requirement of open membership into § 8, rules for the league's general assembly, deleting the exemption, and protecting the clubs that have one only on condition that, within a reasonable period, an open members' club gets a majority in the sense of § 8 No. 3. It also notes that competition law would equally allow the clubs to reduce members' participation for everyone, or give it up altogether: the law permits the aim but does not require it.

The league's Präsidium welcomed the decision on the day and said a solution must be found together by all 36 clubs; the league president, Hans-Joachim Watzke, said solutions now had to be found with all 36 clubs of the two divisions. Before the December general assembly, the fan alliance Fanszenen Deutschlands has called on the clubs to commit to 50+1 and end every exception, dpa reports, while Leverkusen said it takes its fans' wish for a say seriously and Wolfsburg said it knows how important a say is to fans.

In numbers

The five clubs this post names play in both divisions this season. In the Bundesliga after eight matchdays, the last of them on 1 November, RB Leipzig are fourth with 15 points, Leverkusen sixth with 13 and Hoffenheim twelfth with nine. In the 2. Bundesliga after ten, Wolfsburg are third with 19 points, two behind Nürnberg in second, and Hannover 96 are twelfth with 11.

The Bundesliga table, fixtures and scorers are on the Bundesliga page.

Sources: Bundesliga e.V. statute, version of 1 July 2026, § 8, Bundeskartellamt press release, 12 August 2026, Bundeskartellamt closing letter (German), Bundeskartellamt questions and answers (German), Bundeskartellamt press release, 16 June 2025 (German), Bundesliga e.V. statement, 12 August 2026 (German), dpa via Die Rheinpfalz, 30 October 2026 (German).