Excitement after police costs verdict
The consequences are not yet foreseeable
January 14, 2025 – 2:31 p.mReading time: 5 minutes
For years, the DFL has resisted the city of Bremen charging it fees for the additional police work involved in so-called high-risk games. The highest court has now confirmed the Bremen model. What does that mean exactly?
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.
- Police costs for high-risk games: Bundesliga clubs have to pay
But what does that mean exactly? t-online answers the most important questions about the court ruling.
Why were the proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court at all?
In 2015, the state of Bremen issued an invoice (425,000 euros) for a police operation for the first time after the derby between Werder Bremen and Hamburger SV of the German Football League (DFL). The DFL defended itself against this, but had to accept legal defeats before the Higher Administrative Court in Bremen and the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. The proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court opened in April 2024.
The Northern Derby has always been in the “high-risk games” category. The city of Bremen no longer wanted to cover police costs.
What exactly are high risk games?
High-risk games are those games in which clashes between the fan camps are particularly likely. According to the DFL, there were 52 so-called “red games” out of a total of 612 matches in the 1st and 2nd leagues in the 2022/23 season. There are 500 to 600 law enforcement officers on duty at normal Bundesliga games in Bremen, and 800 to 1,000 at high-risk games, as was explained at the hearing.
How much money is involved?
As mentioned above, the city state of Bremen billed the DFL around 400,000 euros for police costs. Further notices followed. According to the city of Bremen, total fees now amount to more than three million euros.
Even outside of so-called high-risk games, police operations at football games cost a lot of money. In the 2022/23 season in Rhineland-Palatinate, the costs for all games in the 1st and 2nd league, the regional league, the upper league, cup games, a relegation match and an international match totaled around 4.6 million euros. Violence in and around stadiums repeatedly occupied the interior ministers’ conferences – also because of the ongoing pyrotechnics problem in the fan curves.
Bremen’s Interior Senator Ulrich Mäurer expects additional fees of 20 to 30 million euros per season for all clubs. And after the verdict he suggests: “The professional league pays into a fund and the federal and state police forces are then billed based on the effort. That would be the easiest thing.” However, this model requires that the DFL revise its position. “I believe that today will contribute to that,” said Mäurer optimistically. If the DFL doesn’t move, the individual states would issue fee schedules – “then you have to pay one way or another.”
DFL boss Hans-Joachim Watzke had already spoken out against a fund before the verdict. “It will not happen that the clubs from the federal states where these costs are not charged pay into a solidarity pot,” said Watzke. “That is the responsibility of the individual state governments.”
Werder Bremen sees it differently, Zoff is programmed. The possible practice whereby clubs may or may not have to pay for police costs in the future, depending on their federal state, is likely to lead to an outcry from the affected clubs – even if Watzke has preemptively rejected the accusation of distortion of competition. “We now have to have discussions in the league association. Werder is not allowed to foot the bill alone. That would be a disadvantage for us,” said Werder’s managing director Tarek Brauer: “We want the league to have a community of solidarity and a fair distribution of the costs.”