rule should remain
Cartel Office does not allow any further 50+1 exceptions
07/13/2023, 4:07 p.m
The Bundeskartellamt’s examination took a long time: the 50+1 rule in German professional football will probably remain in place. The federal authority agrees to the DFL’s proposal. In the future, however, there should be no more exceptions.
In the struggle to keep the 50+1 rule in place, the German Football League (DFL) is facing a final solution. After several months of examination, the Federal Cartel Office announced that it wanted to approve the adjustment application submitted by the DFL. This would allow the DFL general meeting to approve the application to modify the capital investment limit regulation with a two-thirds majority, thus ensuring more legal certainty.
In March, the DFL Presidium unanimously formulated the proposal that there should be no further exceptions to the 50+1 rule adopted by the DFB Bundestag in 1998 when licensed gaming operations were opened up to corporations. For the clubs TSG Hoffenheim, Bayer Leverkusen and VfL Wolfsburg, which have already been considered with exceptions, more far-reaching conditions should apply in the future.
The Cartel Office intends to “declare the changes to the statutes promised by the DFL to be binding and to conclude the procedure on this basis. After the offer of commitments, the 50+1 basic rule should be retained, but the possibility of granting exceptions to funding should be removed from the statutes”. , it said in a statement. The trio of Hoffenheim, Leverkusen and Wolfsburg must also involve the members more in the future and provide financial compensation.
The 50+1 rule is unproblematic, but the exceptions are not
“With the promised deletion of the possibility of exception from the statutes, our concern that the sports policy goals asserted by the DFL will be counteracted by a coexistence of clubs with and without funding exceptions,” said Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt.
The rules of antitrust law would also apply in professional sport, and “the limitation of league participation to clubs characterized by clubs still represents a restriction of competition that requires sports-political legitimacy,” said Mundt: “The commitments offered by the DFL appear overall, however appropriate to address our preliminary antitrust concerns.”
The Bundeskartellamt classified the 50+1 rule, which critics see as a violation of EU law due to violations of freedom of competition, as unproblematic in 2021. However, the authority assessed the exceptions as quite problematic, and the DFL reacted to this with the adjustments.