Incredibly, German football clubs rejected the billion investment

As explained by the head of the DFL supervisory board, Hans-Joachim Watzke, eleven votes were against the sale to the investor, and five abstained. Thus, four votes fell short of supporting the proposal.

Watzke hinted that all eleven votes against were from second division clubs. “Anyone who abstains on such an important issue surprises me a little. But everyone can do what they want,” he said at a press conference after the meeting.

As dpa writes, such an outcome is a major defeat for the DFL leadership under Watzke and interim directors Axl Hellmann and Oliver Leki. “Sometimes life is simple. This is democracy. Most of it was clear, but in the way we wanted. Therefore, from today on, this topic is over,” Watzke said.

DFL wanted to sell shares to an investor. As dictated by league rules, none of the club’s owners can hold more than a 50% stake. To circumvent this rule and to make German football more competitive, the league management proposed investing in the top two leagues as a whole.

Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg are exceptions to the ownership rule known as 50+1.

The DFL’s plan with the new investor was that it would get 12.5 percent of the media rights for the first and second leagues for a period of 20 years. The DFL calculated that it would collect approximately two billion euros for this.

Of this fresh capital, 85 percent would go to future investments and to strengthening the stability of DFL. The aforementioned 36 clubs would receive only 15 percent of this for free use.

Along with the clubs, the fans were also against the proposal, and they pointed this out several times at matches with banners such as “No to investors in the DFL” and “The league belongs to all of us – against the investors”.