Football regional league VfR Aalen has filed for bankruptcy at the district court. The club announced on Wednesday.
At the beginning of the year, the financial planning for the season was completed “in the expectation that the effects of Corona would expire and that a return to normal business with income at the “pre-Corona level” would be possible,” wrote the Swabians on their website home page. “Unfortunately, developments in the course of the Ukraine war, rising energy prices and inflation worked against us.”
In view of falling spectator numbers and sponsorship income, the club had “reduced its cost structure to what was absolutely necessary” and “taken extensive measures to win new partners.”
Legacies from the last bankruptcy and the third division would have made the situation even more difficult. “In the regional league, given the external circumstances of the last three years, it was not possible to compensate for a mid-six-digit amount in addition to the running costs,” the statement said.
The executive committee will now “try everything together with the insolvency administrator to develop and implement an insolvency plan and to lead the VfR Aalen into a financially and sportingly calm waterway.”
VfR is in 14th place in the Regionalliga Südwest table after 13 match days. In February 2017, the club had already filed for bankruptcy.