THE 50 + 1 RULE

In modern football there has been rising arguments about the sanity of the game. Football; created by the poor stolen by the rich is a phrase commonly echoed. Since 2003 there have been 18 takeovers involving premiership clubs alone. However only 1 owner out of the top 12 deals ever was an English man. Technically we are in uncharted waters in terms of football financing. Outrageous player prices with no sort of control and clubs seemingly making money prioritizing decisions every single time in a game that belongs to the fans. Don't get me wrong, there has been attempted reforms. UEFA's financial fair play which technically was a joke and an often suggested one the 50+1 rule.

This begs the question, what is the 50 +1 rule? How has it influenced German football and should it be implemented everywhere?

The 50+1 rule is a rule that has shaped German football ever since the commercialization of football. It infers that German clubs will not be able to sell more than 49.9999% of it's shares to an investor or an outside company. By extension a club must own majority of it's shares(50+1) and this allows fans to hold majority voting rights in German clubs. This has a lot of positive impacts, the first being that football belongs to the fans and who will dare argue with that. For many German clubs you could easily become a member of a club you support at a prize of 30 to 60 Euros annually. This also means you get a say in votes at membership meetings and collectively the fans have majority votes.

This also means that the fans get to elect a representative board and an elected president that represents their interests. This is a huge positive in German football because it means that you get to see a lot of club legends getting to manage their former clubs and who will say this isn't much better? Another implication of this is that if the club is being run poorly, the fans could always kick the board out and make overwhelming changes. 

There is always the even better argument that it preserves the sanity of the game and prevents greedy cooperation from taking over. Well it might actually be good, say what you will about the Bundesliga but there is this matchday feeling fabled in the league and the fans are always at the heart of it. The fans run the league and occasionally unite against decisions from the football association they deem unacceptable. This is why the Bundesliga is the most conservative league amongst the top 5 leagues, unmoved by the hype, untainted by the money and still has safe standing ,beer and smoking access on matchday. Of course its dominated by Bayern but you could just ignore that.

Unfortunately the patting on the back I just gave the system isn't anything in the ultimate justification of whether or not it should be accepted as a general system for running football in the West.50+1 has it's problems. The first issue is that there are loopholes to this as exploited by the Red Bull franchise. They apparently set the buy in price for membership of Leipzig so high and sold it to just 17 of it's workers. That is just pure genius from one of the so called "greedy capitalist cooperation" and if this can be exploited appropriately, the 50+1 rule wouldn't be of much help. Another issue is that there is this condition where if a company sticks with a club for around 20 years and supports it in this time frame, it can be allowed to take over as seen in the Hoffenheim and Leverkusen Takeovers.

The 50+1 rule surely has it's merits but it is not entirely obvious if it is the solution to the status quo, that is if there is something to fix in the first place. Since Neymar's daring move to Paris in 2017, we've crossed the 100 million pound line 8 times. Whereas before that, the line had never been crossed, not even once, even for players like Cristiano Ronaldo. Hundred million euros is the new 30 million euros, year after year the prizes keep increasing,  the quality however dwindles in mediocrity. Do we need better regulations?, Can football financing even be regulated or it's just a utopian dream we keep deluding ourselves into? Is there a better way of equalizing the playing field to some extent financially and if there is, is that way the 50+1 rule? These are really good questions and I do not have the answer.