Can the state allow the German Football League (DFL) to contribute to the costs of police operations in high-risk football games? The smallest federal state of Bremen has been trying to enforce this for more than ten years. The Federal Constitutional Court will decide on Tuesday (January 14, 2025).
Football has a status in Germany like no other sport. The stadiums are full every weekend. And a lot of money is made from football. But there is also a downside: violence between rival fans. Especially when clubs with long-standing rivalries meet – for example at derbies – football games become a major operation for the police.
In order to ensure security in German football, a total of almost 1.6 million police working hours were required in the first and second Bundesliga alone in the 2023/24 season. This corresponds to the working hours of around 1,220 full-time police officers – many millions of euros to ensure order around the stadiums. In Germany the taxpayer pays for all of this.
Bremen wants “King Football” to contribute to the costs
Everything? Not quite. Because in 2014, the smallest federal state of Bremen created the conditions to make king football pay. Namely in high-risk games.
Since then, Section 4 of the Bremen Fees and Contributions Act states:
“A fee is charged by organizers who hold a profit-oriented event in which more than 5,000 people are expected to take part at the same time, if experience shows that violent acts are to be expected before, during or after the event at the event location, on the access or exit routes or otherwise The deployment of additional police forces will foreseeably become necessary in the spatial environment.“
It’s about additional costs for High risk games
Bremen does not want to have the entire costs of police operations reimbursed, but only the additional costs for events where additional police forces are required. In football, this is the case with so-called high-risk games. Instead of a few hundred police officers, there are often a thousand or more police officers providing security at these games (e.g. derbies). And these police officers often have to be requested from other federal states. In the 2022/2023 season there were a total of 52 high-risk games in the first two leagues.
In the northern derby Werder Bremen against HSV on April 19, 2015, Bremen got serious and, after prior announcement, issued a fee notice for 425,718.11 euros to the German Football League (DFL).
The DFL is the association of the 36 football clubs in the Bundesliga and the men’s 2nd Bundesliga. It has full marketing rights to the two leagues and acts as an organizer alongside the clubs themselves.
The legal dispute went through all instances
Because the DFL did not want to cover the costs, the matter ended up before the administrative court and went through all instances up to the Federal Administrative Court. In March 2019, the highest administrative judges in Leipzig confirmed the actions of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. At least basically. A few items from the fee notice still had to be deducted. 385,000 euros remained.
The DFL sees the imposition of costs for public safety as violating the constitution. That is why she went to the Federal Constitutional Court against both the law and the 2019 ruling. Negotiations took place in Karlsruhe in April, and the constitutional authorities announced their decision on Tuesday at 10 a.m.
Does the general public have to pay for public safety?
The legal sticking point in the long dispute is a question of principle: Does the state have to finance its very own task of “public safety” entirely from tax revenue?
The DFL sees it that way. Ensuring public safety is seen as being in the general interest. Therefore, it must also be financed from general public funds, i.e. from tax revenues. In addition, football is not responsible for acts of violence by individual fans or fan groups that occur outside the stadiums. For example, at train stations, access routes or in city centers.
Bremen does not deny that ensuring public safety is in the general interest. However, the constitution does not require that all services in the area of core state tasks be financed exclusively through taxes. And: Fees are recognized if the payer receives something in return for this fee. That is clearly the case here. The police ensure that the games run smoothly. This also creates an economic advantage. The Federal Administrative Court also confirmed this in 2019: Many peaceful fans only go to the stadium because the police specifically reduce the risk of violent acts for them (including on the journey routes). So it’s not a question of who is responsible for the acts of violence, but rather who benefits from the police’s extra work.
High risk game not predictable
The oral hearing before the Federal Constitutional Court also dealt with a few other points: Is the law too vague because the amount of the fee cannot be calculated in advance? Does it matter that the DFL and the clubs cannot influence whether a football game is classified as a high-risk game? What if the many officials are not needed at a game?
Do the clubs or the DFL have to pay?
Last but not least, the long dispute was always about whether the DFL was the right person to contact. The DFL says that the home clubs would play the games. If at all, these should be asked to pay.
The state of Bremen deliberately did not do this, but instead used the DFL, which has an annual turnover of around five billion euros. This has brought nothing to the Werder Bremen club; the DFL wants to reclaim the costs in full from the club and has already done so in part. For the Werder Bremen club, this is a clear competitive disadvantage in professional football because there is currently no other federal state that charges additional police costs
Other federal states could follow suit
Bremen’s Senator for the Interior, Ulrich Mäurer, fought for a long time to convince the other federal states to find a uniform solution. He also suggested a fund solution to the DFL: The DFL could pay into a fund, which could then be used to pay certain additional costs for police operations nationwide.
So far he has run into walls, even though the state auditors have been calling for cost sharing for a long time. Some federal states could now imagine promoting a nationwide solution or even issuing their own rules – if the ruling gives them the green light to do so.