When investors test the line
The clearest test case is Hannover 96. Its majority shareholder, Martin Kind, applied in August 2017 for a 50+1 exemption under the same 20-year clause that covers Leverkusen and Wolfsburg. The DFL Executive Committee rejected the application in July 2018, ruling that Kind had not put enough money into the club over the relevant period to qualify as "substantial support," a decision Hannover's ownership called incomprehensible at the time.
RB Leipzig took a different route entirely. Rather than seek an exemption, the club, backed by the energy drink company Red Bull, kept its voting membership deliberately tiny. By 2016 Leipzig had only 17 members with voting rights, nearly all of them Red Bull employees, while charging a membership application fee of around 100 euros plus roughly 800 euros a year, compared with Bayern Munich's fee of 30 to 60 euros. The club has never technically broken 50+1, but rival supporters have spent a decade arguing it mocks the spirit of the rule while staying inside its letter.
