There’s a reason why Dortmund see themselves as more than just a passing trend before Bayern Munich get back to business. There’s a reason they won’t be a feeder club to Europe’s giants, holding on to almost all their best players. Not just the two titles and the return to the Champions League. It’s mostly about known the kind of support they have, maybe unlike anywhere else in Europe.
The Westfalenstadion, officially known as Signal Iduna Park (naming rights, you know), is the biggest stadium in Germany, able to hold 80,720 fans in league matches and just over 65,000 for Champions League matches. Their average attendance? The second highest in Europe with 80,521, pretty much selling out the stadium every other weekend. It was claimed that over 400,000 people tried to get a ticket to Dortmund’s title clincher last season.
With that in mind, it would be no surprise to anyone hearing that they’ve sold out the allocated amount for season tickets, selling 54,000, more than any other German team, including Bayern Munich. It’s not just the success and the fantastic team being built and improved under Klopp. The passion for football is the greatest in Germany in that area, which included their huge rivals Schalke. Having a team that once again aiming for the upper echelon of the table and hopefully in the Champions League with due time, maybe even this season, has razed the craze level especially with Dortmund fans to a new level.
Dortmund lead the big three of ticket selling, followed by Schalke with 43,195 season tickets sold to their Veltins-Arena, the sixth most visited stadium in Europe last season (61,139) and Bayern Munich with 38,000. Bayern were fifth in Europe last season with a season sell-out of 69,00 per match. All three teams have already closed their sales for season tickets.
The big surprise came from Fortuna Dusseldorf, returning to the Bundesliga after 15 years, selling 31,000 season tickets to their Esprit Arena, which has a capacity of 54,600. In general, all 18 clubs in the league kept par with last season’s record breaking number of 480,835 season tickets sold, selling 250 less this season, which is mostly due to the fact that one of the newly promoted sides, Greuther Furth, have a stadium with only 18,500 seats.