Germany’s highest court has drawn a line under a dispute between the city-state of Bremen and the German Football League (DFL), which operates the Bundesliga. On Tuesday, the Constitutional Court ruled that it is lawful for football clubs to be required to contribute to policing costs for “high-risk” matches.
What is a high-risk match?
According to the DFL, “high-risk matches are matches in which, based on general experience or current knowledge, there is sufficient probability that a particularly dangerous situation will occur.” The primary responsibility for deciding whether any given match should be designated as high risk lies with the home club. However, the German FA (DFB) also has the right to classify a match as particularly at risk of rioting “based on its own findings.”
How many matches are considered high risk?
According to the DFL, around one in 12 matches in Germany’s top two divisions are regarded as high risk. These include some of Germany’s best-known derbies, like Borussia Dortmund vs. Schalke, Borussia Mönchengladbach vs. Cologne or Werder Bremen vs. Hamburg.
How did the legal dispute start?
In 2015, the Bremen police sent the DFL an invoice for €425,000 ($410,000) for the police operation to secure a match between Werder Bremen and Hamburg. This was the first time this had happened. The total amount of the invoices in dispute has since climbed to more than €3 million.
The legal basis for this is a regulation passed by the city-state of Bremen in 2014. This stipulates that a fee be charged for “profit-orientated events” with more than 5,000 people if additional police are required at the event venue or its surroundings “due to expected acts of violence.”
The DFL initially successfully challenged the law in 2017. However, Bremen’s right to pass the costs on to football clubs was subsequently upheld twice in higher courts. The DFL then filed a complaint with Germany’s highest court.
What were the arguments being made?
The DFL argued that while the clubs are responsible for security inside the stadiums, outside the venues it is a “core task of the state” to ensure public safety. According to the DFL, this is derived “from the state’s monopoly on the use of force” and is therefore “fundamentally to be financed from tax revenue and not from fees.” It also rejected what it considered to be “unclear criteria” with which the city-state of Bremen unilaterally designates matches as high risk.
At the Constitutional Court hearing, Bremen’s Interior Senator Ulrich Mäurer pointed to the high financial burden placed on Germany’s states if they were to be required to provide significantly more police officers for matches with a potential for violence.
“The costs are borne by the taxpayers,” Mäurer said, arguing that measures introduced by the football clubs for increased security had not yet brought the desired success.
Mäurer has suggested that the DFL set up a fund of some €20 to €30 million annually for the clubs to pay the police costs for high-risk matches. Hans-Joachim Watzke, head of the DFL supervisory board, has rejected the idea.
What does the Constitutional Court’s decision mean?
Now that Bremen has prevailed, the ruling could lead other German states to follow suit by billing clubs for part of the policing costs at high-risk matches. Prior to the decision being handed down, the city-state of Hamburg had indicated that it would do so.
How do other European countries deal with the issue?
In France, football clubs have been required to pay for additional police costs at high-risk matches since 1995. In Italy, the clubs have been contributing to the costs since 2014. In Spain and the UK, the state pays for all football-related police operations.
This article was originally written in German and published on January 13, 2025. It was updated on January 14, 2025 to reflect the court decision.
