TB: The 50+1 rule - what can we learn from the Germans?

As part of my full-time education, I was given the opportunity to create an extended project, wherein I could write a dissertation on any subject of my choosing. I chose to focus my spare time on the viability of Germany’s specific ownership rules potentially being implemented in professional football in England. With Hereford’s demise being my inspiration for this little project, I thought here may be as good a place as any to explain my conclusions from my research.


The 50+1 rule is implemented in the top two tiers of German football and essentially means that the supporters’ trusts and societies must retain 50% of a club’s shares plus one more. This way, supporters retain the majority of voting rights and as such, can dictate ticket prices and merchandise costs. The consequence of this is that German football has attendances far higher than in England and the atmosphere in grounds smashes the London stadium out of the park - in this case the Queen Elizabeth Olympic.

So far so good, but there are cracks beneath the surface. Prior to the 50+1 rule, all clubs with the exception of works teams (Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg) were owned by member associations anyway. The introduction of a 50+1 rule didn’t therefore force any immediate change in regulations, instead only providing loopholes to pre-existing works teams. In contrast, before commercialisation in the late 1980s and the birth of the Premier League in 1992, football clubs in England were owned by local businessman who it was always presumed acted in the supporters’ best interests as they too were supporters of the club. However, this mutual, unwritten understanding was hypothetically torn up as a wealthy investors saw the commercial opportunities football clubs could offer compared to the local businessman’s finite amounts of wealth. Fan Ownership has never been seen in English football as an ownership model to aspire towards.

In England, fan ownership has taken over only as phoenix clubs, or to bail out teams in financial difficulty. Currently in the football league, only Exeter City, Newport County, Wycombe Wanderers and AFC Wimbledon are fan owned, and all have notable financial restrictions compared to other clubs and are unlikely to reach the second tier in the near future. Meanwhile, any potential introduction of the 50+1 rule would mean all current owners would have to become minority shareholders and supporters’ trusts must be financially strong enough to buy them out. Plus, the aforementioned owners would have to be willing to vote for such a move at FA and EFL AGM’s.

In short, we can conclude that the 50+1 rule can’t be translated into English football, but there are many attributes we can introduce into English football which may not cause such uproar among CEOs. For example, each club could include a supporters trust representative on the board of directors who acts as a link between fans and the board. In clubs such as Charlton and Blackpool at the moment, I personally believe clubs could have benefited from having a communication barrier replaced by an open communication between the decision makers and the fans who ultimately want to see the best for the club. Or perhaps, the FA could take a more proactive role in ensuring fit and proper governance, appointing regional officials whose job it is to ensure fans are not being marginalised by club owners or that those owners are acting recklessly. Going above and beyond the current ‘fit and proper’ test which, as we Bulls fans are aware of, simply doesn’t work.

In Sweden, the 50+1 rule has been implemented successfully, replicating the rule in Germany completely. However, football doesn’t have the same history and precedent in Sweden and so acted as a far softer ground for implementation. In fact, when the Swedish FA sought to manipulate the laws to open up new commercial ventures, they were rebuked by protesting supporters. A small victory. Around the world, in developing countries, football is capable of being built up as a sustainable game owned and governed by the supporters who have clubs’ best interests at heart. Whilst in England, this may not be possible, there is a ripe opportunity for reforming fan engagement in the beautiful game, before disillusionment, not felt since the Glazer takeover in Manchester, becomes widespread.
Football should change its ways, before the supporters change theirs.

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