DFL fails in court
Bundesliga clubs have to pay for high-risk games
Updated on January 14, 2025 – 10:28 amReading time: 2 minutes
The Constitutional Court ends a ten-year dispute. The federal states are allowed to charge their police costs for high-risk games.
The German Football League (DFL) has failed at the Federal Constitutional Court in the dispute over the umbrella organization’s participation in police costs for high-risk games. Their constitutional complaint against a corresponding regulation from Bremen was unsuccessful, as the First Senate in Karlsruhe announced.
The challenged norm is compatible with the Basic Law, explained court president Stephan Harbarth in the verdict. The aim of the regulation is to shift the costs to the person who caused them and to whom the profits accrue. This is a constitutionally legitimate goal.
High-risk games are games in which clashes between fan camps are particularly likely. Since 2014, Bremen’s Fees and Contributions Act has stipulated that the city can charge fees for additional police costs for profit-oriented events that are known to be prone to violence with more than 5,000 people.
The DFL received its first fee notice in 2015 – for a Bundesliga game between SV Werder Bremen and Hamburger SV. The city state of Bremen billed the DFL around 400,000 euros for police costs. Further notices followed.
The DFL considered this regulation to be unconstitutional and therefore void – and took it to court. In the opinion of the umbrella organization for the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga, the city of Bremen lacked a definable performance that could be attributed to it. However, this is a constitutional requirement for the legal charging of fees. In addition, individual troublemakers are responsible for the necessary police operation – and not the organizers.
Several courts have dealt with the controversial issue in recent years. The DFL’s lawsuit was successful in the first instance alone – the Bremen administrative court declared the fee collection in 2017 to be unlawful, among other things because the calculation method was too vague.
A year later, the judgment was overturned by the Bremen Higher Administrative Court, which again considered the fee requirement to be legal. In 2019, this decision was confirmed by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.
In Bremen, according to the city, fees amounting to more than three million euros were involved, which the DFL has so far been invoiced. It remains to be seen whether other federal states will follow the example of the Hanseatic city. If the Bremen model were to become established in the other federal states following the decision of the highest German judges, the professional clubs would face considerable additional financial burdens.