Less than a year after Bundesliga supporters coordinated one of the largest organized protest movements German football has witnessed in recent years, the argument surrounding stadium security has entered a new phase.

The banners, silent opening minutes and demonstrations that accompanied the autumn 2025 protests were primarily directed against what organized fan groups viewed as an expanding apparatus of state intervention around football. Personalized tickets, stricter identification requirements, reduced away allocations, broader stadium bans and potential surveillance measures all formed part of the debate surrounding the Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK).

Now the focus is increasingly shifting toward a different question. How many police officers should actually be required to secure football matches in the first place — and who should pay when unusually large deployments become necessary?

Figures released in Hesse this week illustrate the scale of the issue.

Across 138 home matches involving Eintracht Frankfurt, Darmstadt 98, Wehen Wiesbaden, Kickers Offenbach, FSV Frankfurt and Hessen Kassel during the 2025/26 season, Hessian state police accumulated approximately 90,000 deployment hours. More than 18,000 additional hours were contributed by the Federal Police.

Forty of those 138 fixtures involved disturbances. Violent incidents were recorded at four matches. Authorities registered 135 criminal offences, 594 administrative offences and 25 injuries, including six police officers. For the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP), the conclusion is clear.

“Police are not an infinite [personnel] resource,” Hessian GdP chairman Jens Mohrherr — as quoted by Kicker — said. “Prevention has to come before police deployment.”

The autumn 2025 protest movement emerged amid growing concern that Germany’s interior ministers were preparing a significant tightening of football-security policy. GGFN examined the reasons behind the widespread Matchday 11 atmosphere boycotts after supporters across the Bundesliga agreed to remain silent for the opening 12 minutes of matches.