Bundesliga

The Bundesliga is the top flight of German football that is contested by 18 teams. Formed in 1963 the league sees 2 teams automatically relegated for finishing in the bottom two positions while the third bottom team will play the third place team in the 2. Bundesliga (the second tier of German football) for the remaining place.

Attendances

German football is widely respected for the way it treats its fans with fair prices and subsidising travel to away games. For this reason the German Bundesliga has the highest average attendance in the world at around 45,000 (45,134 for season 2011-2012).

Stadium Capacity

Stadium capacities in the German top flight vary from just 15,000 right up to 81,359. The full list of current Bundesliga team stadiums and capacities for the 2016/17 season can be seen below.

FC Augsburg       Augsburg             WWK ARENA     30,660

Bayer Leverkusen            BayArena            30,210

Bayern Munich                Allianz Arena      75,000

Borussia Dortmund         Signal Iduna Park             81,359

Borussia Mönchengladbach        Stadion im Borussia-Park             54,010

Darmstadt 98     Merck-Stadion am Böllenfalltor               17,000

Eintracht Frankfurt          Commerzbank-Arena    51,500

SC Freiburg         Schwarzwald-Stadion    24,000

Hamburger SV  Volksparkstadion            57,000

Hertha BSC         Olympiastadion               74,475

TSG Hoffenheim              Wirsol Rhein-Neckar-Arena       30,150

FC Ingolstadt     Audi Sportpark 15,000

FC Köln RheinEnergieStadion 50,000
RB Leipzig           Red Bull Arena  42,959

Mainz 05              Coface Arena     34,000

Schalke 04           Veltins-Arena   62,271

Werder Bremen               Weserstadion  42,100

VfL Wolfsburg   Wolfsburg          Volkswagen Arena          30,000

Most successful teams

The Bundesliga’s most successful club to date are Bayern Munich who have won the league 25 times to date.

Coverage

Coverage of the Bundesliga in Germany on Radio, Mobile broadcast and TV are distributed by DFL Sports Enterprises. Sky holds the rights however the first game of the season, the first game after the winter break and both legs of the relegation play off are broadcast on free television.

The Bundeliga is also broadcast in over 200 countries via a number of broadcasters that bid for the rights to show the league.

Finance

To give you an idea of the revenue generated by the Bundesliga you can look at the 2009-2010 season when the league turnover was calculated at around 1.7bn Euro’s. This was split between Match day revenue, sponsorship and broadcast deals.

Transfers

The highest transfer fee received by a Bundesliga team was in 2015 when Manchester city paid 75m Euro’s for Kevin De Bruyne of VFL Wolfsburg. The highest fee paid by a Bundesliga team was by Bayern Munich who paid £40m Euro’s for Javi Martinez of Athletic Bilbao.

Cash Prizes

The teams can earn prize money that rises and falls depending on their final league position with £38.3m Euro’s available as the total prize fund during the 2014/15 season.

Players Records

The Highest scoring Bundesliga player of all time is German legend Gerd Muller who scored an incredible 365 goals, all for Bayern Munich. He also holds the record for the most scored in a single season with 40.

Dieter Muller holds the record for the most goals scored in a game with 6 while Robert Lewandowski scored an incredible 5 goals in 9 minutes after coming on as a substitute. Lewandowski also broke the record for fastes hat-trick iin the Bundesliga at just 3minutes 22 seconds, fastest four goals at 5 minutes 42 seconds and fastest five goals at just 8 minutes 59 seconds.

Fanbase

For the past 10 seasons Borussia Dortmund have dominated the biggest support tables with an average attendance of 81,178 in the 2015-16 season.

International Football

The German national team is governed by the German Football Association and is widely regarded as one of the strongest teams in international football. Germany are currently joint second for the record of most World Cup wins with Italy on 4 titles, only one behind leaders Brazil. Germany are also the current World Cup Holders.

Germany competes in the World Cup and European Championships and, as we mentioned, are the current World Champions. Since the German national team was founded in 1900 it has had an interesting history with the split between the East German and West German (Saarland from 1950-56). It was not until the reunification of Germany in 1990 that the two teams merged, bringing their individual achievements together.

Germany have qualified for 18 World Cups and their four wins came in 1954, 1974, 1990 and most recently in the last tournament held in Brazil in 2014. Germany started their campaign with a strong 4-0 win over Portugal before dropping points in a 2-2 draw with Ghana. They got back in to winning ways with a 1-0 victory over the U.S.A before defeating Algeria and France to set up a semi final against hosts Brazil.

With the home advantage and a proven pedigree in international football, Brazil were expected to perform but Germany shocked the world of football with a resounding 7-1 victory setting up the 2014 World Cup Final against Argentina.

Germany ran out 1-0 winners thanks to an extra time goal from Mario Gotze in front of a crowd of 74,738 in the Estadio do Maracana in Rio.

Germany have also qualified for the last 12 consecutive European Championships, winning the trophy three times in the process in the years 1972, 1980 and in England in 1996 with a ‘Golden Goal’ from Oliver Bierhoff.

Lothar Matthaus holds the record for the most amount of appearences for the German National team with 150 and the current leading goalscorer is Miroslav Klose who scored 71 times in 137 games.