🥤 Why does everyone hate RB Leipzig? | OneFootball

RasenBallsport Leipzig, formed 2009, are in a Champions League semi-final.

They play exciting, attacking football with incredible young talents.

But they don’t win the hearts of neutrals; their story isn’t one of a scrappy underdog; and they’re hated throughout German football. Why?

Germany is the land of fan politics, of ultras, of fan ownership.

The 50+1 rule is in place to keep fans in control of the fates of their clubs. No single person or company can own more than half a club’s shares.

There are outliers. Bayer Leverkusen and VfL Wolfsburg were formed as workers’ clubs and therefore exempted by the DFL. TSG Hoffenheim are another one. They are owned by ex-youth player and local billionaire businessman Dietmar Hopp, who was given permission to take over the club after investing heavily.

Leipzig are no exception to the rule. In fact, they technically abide by the 50+1 rule. They just don’t let anyone becoming a voting member.

You can become a member – and you can even pay €1,000-per-season to be a gold member – but that gives you no voting rights and no say on how the club is run.

No, as of 2016 (their first year in the Bundesliga), Leipzig had just 17 voting members. A collection of club employees.

Red Bull had a clear ambition to buy and rebrand a football club in Germany. And they wanted that club to be as big as possible, as quickly as possible.

The company made attempts to take over at St Pauli, 1860 München and Fortuna Düsseldorf. But with fans on the board to have their say, Red Bull were rejected at every turn. In Germany, success is no compensation for history and tradition.

So the energy drink giants purchased the license of then-fifth tier club SSV Markranstädt, based just outside the city of Leipzig. The name, kit, badge was changed and suddenly, RB Leipzig existed in the fifth tier of German football.

But why do football clubs exist? Why do they want to make money? For the vast majority, it’s about winning. They want to play at a higher level so they can make more money so they can reinvest that money and win more games. Not Leipzig. For RB Leipzig, winning isn’t the end game.

The ultimate aim is to get as many eyes on the Red Bull brand as possible. Leipzig do win football matches and they have created a community. But they exist, when it comes down to it, as an advertisement. That is the entire reason for their existent and, by extension, their success. And that sits so poorly within German football.

When it comes to spending, it’s clear to see Leipzig’s rise to the top hasn’t exactly been the fairytale story it can be painted as.

Over the last decade, Leipzig’s net transfer spend (€187m) outstrips every Bundesliga club bar Bayern Munich (€330m). Even though they have only been in the Bundesliga for four of those seasons.

Over the last five seasons, that net spend (€160m) is just marginally behind Bayern’s €175m outlay. Look at the last four seasons alone and the scales tip towards Leipzig even more.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Leipzig’s spending power is predicated on their ownership.

Red Bull pay €35m-a-season to have their logo on the club’s shirt. Compare that to the rumoured €15m-a-year deal Borussia Dortmund have recently signed with 1&1.

And that’s despite there being little doubt surrounding which of the two clubs has a bigger following, locally, nationally, and globally.

This would be fairly common in England, or at least not too distant from the norms that already exist. It’s the same at Paris Saint-Germain, too. But all those clubs existed before their billionaire owners appeared. Leipzig didn’t. And that’s the difference.

The real tragedy is that this has been allowed happened in German football, where fans are more closely attached and involved in the club than in any other major European league.

Ask the fans at St Pauli, 1860 Munich and Fortuna Düsseldorf how they feel about rejecting advances from Red Bull more than a decade ago and they’ll all tell you the same thing: their club would have died had a takeover been allowed to happen.

RB Leipzig’s very existence threatens the culture of fan ownership that is the most important thing to fans in Germany.

Their ownership means they can outspend their rivals and distort the competition. But most importantly, they undermine what football, and being a club, or a supporter, actually means to German football fans.

No wonder they’re so disliked.