The Lex Leverkusen is no More

Which probably raises the question what the Lex Leverkusen was in the first place? It has to do with the 50+1 rule, which again probably raises the question what that rule is as well. And then, what has it all to do with the Bundesliga?

The 50+1 rule means you can’t buy more than 49% of a Bundesliga club. Or better, you can’t buy more than 49% of a professional football team ltd/plc/whatever that belongs to a Bundesliga club. Bundesliga clubs are membership associations and as such have members, not shareholders. Hence the peculiar scarcity of American leveraged takeovers, Italian media moguls, Russian vanity and superfluous Arab oil money in the Bundesliga. In case you ever wondered.

The Lex Leverkusen was the informal name of an exception to the 50+1 rule. This exception was specifically designed to apply to Bayer Leverkusen. It said that any company that had considerably supported a Bundesliga club for at least 20 years prior to January 1st, 1999 can own 100% of the shares. Why was this exception made for the Bayer AG in the first place? Who knows. The DFB had a World Cup bid to win and then a World Cup to organize, and Bayer has been a generous sponsor of this undertaking. But that’s mere speculation. What the DFB didn’t intend but then had to concede, was that this rule also applied to VfL Wolfsburg. Wolfsburg went to court and the court decided that Volkswagen’s meek financial support up until January 1st 1999 was still “considerable” enough to allow Volkswagen to own 100% of the shares as well.

Since then, Bayer Leverkusen and VfL Wolfsburg had been the elephants in the room, when it came to the integrity of a rule that rather randomly doesn’t apply to all clubs. Of course, in recent seasons they were joined by Hoffenheim, who found their own way of circumventing 50+1, and then there is RB Leipzig on the horizon, with yet another attempt to turn 50+1 into a joke on the expense of the so called “traditional” Bundesliga clubs.

So for a few year’s Martin Kind had been on a personal crusade against the 50+1 rule, which he later toned down, to become a fight against the exceptions made for the aforementioned clubs.

Uli Hesse wrote about this in detail for ESPN Soccernet here and here.

Today, German football’s Permanent Court of Arbitration decided that the 50+1 rule stays in place but that the “Lex Leverkusen” is no more. Or rather, it has been opened up. You are still required to considerably support a club for 20 years, but you no longer had to do it prior to January 1st, 1999.

It will be interesting to see which clubs a) can and then b) will take advantage of the modified rule. It’s safe to assume Hannover 96 should/will be one of them, and will then rely a little less on Jörg Schmadtke’s bargain shopping expertise and Mirko Slomka’s genius to qualify for Europe.

Some Related Bundesliga Posts:

• Matchday 1: Borussia Dortmund Here and the Other 17 Clubs over There
• The Best Response to Bayer Leverkusen’s Start to the Season

Category: Bundesliga