Money and Tradition, the Brewing German Soccer War

Last week, Enrico Hommel, a leader of the fan club at RB Leipzig—a German second division team owned by Red Bull—received a letter in the mail. "Dear football friends from Leipzig," the letter began, "we would like to warn you [against] the long trip to Karlsruhe." The letter asserted that the fans of Karlsruher SC, whom Leipzig were due to play on the following Monday, had planned "various actions against the fans and the construct RB Leipzig." The letter was signed, "anxious fans from Karlsruhe." Nine other RB Leipzig supporters reportedly received the same note.

For fans of RB Leipzig, threats and lobbed insults aren't anything new. Since Red Bull took over the club in 2009, it has assumed the position of Germany's most hated team, a title previously held by Hoffenheim. Like RB Leipzig, Hoffenheim is essentially owned by a private company—for years it's been propped up by the billions of Dietmar Hopp, the founder of software giant SAP, the team's main sponsor—which is anathema to the traditionalist ideals of German soccer fans. But personal threats in the mail? This was different.

And it didn't end there. Before Monday's match, about twenty hooded individuals stormed into RB Leipzig's team hotel in some kind of pitched protest against the team. "Thank God the players were in their rooms at the time," said Ralf Rangnick, Leipzig's general manager. During the match, Karlsruhe fans wore surgical masks, as if the Red Bull players had some contagious disease. After the match, which ended 0-0, a Leipzig player traded jerseys with a Karlsruhe player, and RB Leipzig alleges fans blocked the team bus from leaving until a security guard arranged for the players to trade back.

There are perhaps two places in the world where amateurism, and by extension the broad rejection of corporate money's influence in major spectator sports, remains something to be fought over: the United States and Germany. In the U.S., the NCAA holds the multi-billion-dollar industry that is college athletics to an amateur ideal that is increasingly broken and absurd. In Germany, amateurism at the highest level of soccer was slowly done away with beginning in 1949—a relatively late date compared to England, where professionals took to the field in the late 1800s—but the legacy of amateurism and its corresponding principals continues to loom heavy in the culture of German soccer. Today, the ideal German club is still fan-owned and apart from the influence of corporate money. At the moment, Red Bull is that culture's biggest threat.

This threat is especially pronounced among the group of clubs in Germany known as Traditionsvereine, or "traditional clubs." Defining what is and is not a traditional club can be tricky, but there are two tests sure to get a team on the list: having won national championships in the pre-Bundesliga, amateur era and/or inclusion as a founding member of the Bundesliga—an honor that was reserved for the giant clubs of the 1950s and '60s. Bayern Munich, interestingly, is on the first list but not the second. Karlsruher SC, which grew out of a once-dominant club called Phönix Karlsruhe, is on both. RB Leipzig isn't on either.

The legacy of German soccer's amateur roots is even written into the rulebooks. The famous 50+1 rule, with a couple exceptions, forbids a single entity from owning more than 49 percent of a club. RB Leipzig is not one of the exempted teams. Red Bull essentially owns the club because they managed to exploit a few loopholes.

The consensus among traditionalist soccer fans is that RB Leipzig, and to a similar degree the teams owned by a single entities and exempted from 50+1, like Hoffenheim, Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg, are a threat to the very soul of the German game. They're angry about the advantage these moneyed clubs have over teams held to the 50+1 standard and anxious about whether the future of German soccer will continue to hold fan values above corporate values, a practice that has led to the Bundesliga having the world's highest average attendance.

These concerns are nothing new, but the tension is clearly growing. The anxiety in Karlsruhe extends to the very top of Germany's soccer establishment. The changing nature of global soccer, and the rise of single-entity teams have put the DFB in a tricky spot. The Bundesliga's biggest competitor, the English Premier League, just signed a TV deal worth $2.6 billion per season. The Bundesliga's current deal is worth just $770 million. To keep up, the Bundesliga needs investment, and if that investment isn't coming from TV, it's got to come from somewhere, right? On the other hand, to open up the Bundesliga to the laissez faire, highest-bidder ownership seen in the Premier League would go against the very basis of the game and potentially undermine the fan loyalty.

Whether German soccer will ultimately sell its soul is impossible to answer, but don't expect the anger and anxiety seen in Karlsruhe on Monday to dissipate. Red Bull's goal in Leipzig is to turn the team into a Bundesliga giant. With the company's deep pockets and its commitment to spending on sports, it's a goal the company is likely to achieve. When it does reach the Bundesliga, it will almost certainly come at the expense of a Traditionsverein, which isn't likely to please many Bundesliga fans.

Can you imagine a league table that reads Bayern Munich, Wolfsburg, Bayer Leverkusen, Hoffenheim, RB Leipzig? I can. Will it be good for German soccer when it does? I'm not so sure.