The Women’s Bundesliga attendance record was broken on Saturday, September 6, when the Bayern Munich Women took the field at the Allianz Arena against Bayer Leverkusen Women. 57,762 showed up.
That the record would fall has been known for a while, but as the Bavarians announced on Monday, September 1, not only would that record be broken, but it would probably be exceeded by much. The club revealed that 50,000 tickets had been sold for the match up to that point.
The previous women’s Bundesliga attendance record was 38,365, from a 2022 encounter between 1. FC Köln and Eintracht Frankfurt.
2022 was indeed the year when the current women’s football boom began, after the performance of the women’s national team at the Euros that year had finally captured the nation’s attention.
That was when clubs started playing some selected Women’s Bundesliga games in the large men’s stadia.
A Huge Difference
While Bayern Munich Women have a vocal and dedicated fan base, they usually play their home matches at the FC Bayern Campus, which has a 2,000-capacity stadium. Only after 2022 did their matches begin to sell out, even at that tiny ground.
Now, as the Bavarians’ women’s side opened their season, they did so in front of a crowd that is far more than 25 times as big as what they are used to.
Why the Women’s Bundesliga Attendance Record Is a Huge Accomplishment
Germany is a country where football has traditionally been viewed as a predominantly male sport. This is sadly only now beginning to slightly shift in the right direction.
In fact, it was so bad that the DFB (then the West German Football Association) banned women from officially playing the sport between 1955 and 1970.
So, only 55 years ago did they very reluctantly lift the ban, after women threatened to form their own separate football association. Even in 1970, the leaders of the DFB very arrogantly believed that the idea of women’s football would blow over, once the ban was lifted, so they relented.
While the East German Football Association never had such a ban in place, it never lifted a finger to promote the women’s game either.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Chelsea Break New Ground with Alyssa Thompson Signing
Bayern Only Recently Became a Women’s Football Powerhouse
Back to the present, the Bayern Munich women have not, for a long time, assumed their current role of leader in the German women’s football. In fact, they only gained promotion to the Women’s Bundesliga at the turn of the millennium.
Instead, teams like 1. FFC Frankfurt, FCR Duisburg, and Turbine Potsdam dominated the league up until fairly recently. Since then, though, Frankfurt merged with the men’s club Eintracht, while Duisburg also merged with a local men’s club, before getting relegated and disappearing altogether.
Of the original trio, only Turbine remain a purely women’s club, although they now find themselves in the Second Division.
Around the 2010s, VFL Wolfsburg and Bayern Munich emerged as the two top women’s teams in the country. Recently, Bayern began to use its financial strength to overtake Wolfsburg and other women’s Bundesliga sides as well.
Since then, Bayern Munich Women have won the Bundesliga three times in a row and in four of the last five seasons. Internationally, though, Bayern have also suffered from the fact that other countries in Europe have overtaken Germany in the women’s game.
The best that Bayern Munich women did in the WUCL was to get knocked out in the semifinals twice in their history.
But they have a good mix of players together, such as England international Georgia Stanway and Danish star Pernille Harder, to name just two. Maybe the women’s Bundesliga attendance record will motivate them to have a good season.
Main Photo
Credit: IMAGO / Passion2Press
Recording Date: 06.09.2025