The Fan Alliance Our Curve has once again denounced the lack of involvement of club members in the decision on the entry of an investor in German professional soccer.

“Lack of time and short notice” artificially increase the pressure on voters, the fan group said shortly before the vote: ‘Information papers were only sent to the clubs in the last few weeks.’ A ‘reasonable, transparent and in-depth discussion’ of the issues was therefore ‘simply impossible’.

The consequence of this is that “once again, only a few insiders are being involved. A critical process in the sense of member-led associations is being made extremely difficult or impossible,” Unsere Kurve continued. The approach of bypassing the members represents “a remarkable break with the unique nature of German football”. After all, there was “no approval for the financing model” from the few members who were included.

The fan alliance divided its criticism into three points. Firstly, with regard to the rather vaguely defined topic of digitization, a dedicated DFL streaming platform would hardly be sufficient to consider such risky financing models. Furthermore, with regard to internationalization, Unsere Kurve questions the calculation of the assumed increase in revenue. The “rat race” is “neither nationally nor internationally the answer in the interest of football”.

Last but not least, one cannot “see any valid reason” why the risk of involving an investor should be taken. Rather, the alliance considers the approach to be a “fatal error in reasoning. We share the assessment of some DFL members that other forms of financing must be discussed and seriously considered”.