# The organization of sport and sports policies in Germany

Michel Koebel

► To cite this version:

Michel Koebel. The organization of sport and sports policies in Germany. Sport, Welfare and Social Policy in the European Union, pp.75-85, 2020, Research in Sport, Culture and Society. hal-02552938

HAL Id: hal-02552938

https://hal.science/hal-02552938v1

Submitted on 3 Feb 2025

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>
# 7 The organisation of sport and sports policies in Germany

Michel Koebel 0000-0001-9843-5640

The Nazi era led the German authorities after the war to devise a political system preventing too much concentration of power. Federalism and the principle of subsidiarity are at the foundation of sports policies in Germany, as are most areas of social life. The promotion of sport is not included in the German Fundamental Law, but develops mainly at the local level. The type of investment remains variable from one Land to another, depending on the political affiliations of the elected representatives and the dynamism of the local associative network. The development of participatory and direct democracy also affects sports policy choices, especially for hosting major events. The German Olympic and Sports Confederation – Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (DOSB) – which occupies a central – almost hegemonic – place in the organised sports movement, is particularly dynamic thanks to a network of several million volunteers and makes Germany one of the most sporting countries in Europe, even if access to sport remains socially unequal. As in other countries, commercial sport, self-organised sport and the use of sport as a tool for integration have been developing strongly in the recent period.

## Introduction

The evolution of sport in Germany must be understood in the light of its historical legacy, and especially the Nazi era. Germany would indeed use sport to glorify and strengthen its supremacy over the world, as would other totalitarian dictatorial regimes throughout the 20th century (such as Italy or the Soviet Union). This period – and in particular the way power was gained and exercised during the 1930s – has had a lasting impact on the making of the fundamental laws that have been governing Germany ever since. They have shaped the organisation and funding of sport, as well as other areas of the social, economic and political life. These dark days had to be left behind and prevented from ever happening again. Consequently, federalism was established in order to create an entity and ensure that the state would not become too powerful. In this way, Länder play a significant role in the German federal state, especially when it comes to establishing a regional government, provided that the national legal requirements are met: each Land possesses its own constitution, head of government, ministries and parliament. Similarly, the freedom to create companies or associations – provided that their objectives and actions do not go against the public order or the principle of understanding between peoples (Article 9 of the Fundamental Law) – contributes to the promotion of sport, although indirectly since organised sport is essentially associative.

The principle of subsidiarity that governs state intervention guarantees the relative independence of local authorities. The desire to break away from the way the Nazi regime used to treat part of the German population on religious, sexual or political grounds found expression in an effort to guarantee every human being fundamental rights, as detailed in the body of the same text – and not in the introduction as is often done – and also to guarantee the existence of
political parties, including opposition ones (provided that the latter do not jeopardise the constitution). In the same way – despite the German history of direct democracy allowed in municipalities, yet hardly applied outside the smallest ones (Wollmann, 1999) – there is no referendum process at the national level, because of the way it was misused by the Weimar Republic and Hitler when he was in power. Over the last decades, this type of governance has been increasingly adopted at the local level, and we will see its impact on sport policies, particularly on the refusal to host certain major sports events.

Since a reform enforced in 2006, the central government has acquired more important prerogatives than the mere traditional sovereign functions, and especially in the areas of education, research and environment. The issue of sport was still not integrated into the Fundamental Law (Grundgesetz),<fnref n="1" /> despite the regular demands of some political and sports figures: for instance, representatives of the sports movement in 2006, shortly before the football World Cup hosted by Germany and right as the two historic federations merged (their strategy consisted in taking culture into account in their request to integrate sport into the Fundamental Law, as the German Council for Culture had long tried to do with the promotion of culture, in vain); the liberal-democrat party (FDP) in 2009 and social-democrat party (SPD) in 2012, both with the support of the German Olympic and Sports Confederation – Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (DOSB) – although this integration may have impeded the independence of the sports movement.<fnref n="2" /> As of now, none of these attempts has been successful. Constitutional law experts have looked into this issue, numerous adversarial debates have taken place, both in academies and in the media, providing an opportunity to introduce a somewhat contrasted overview of sports practices and the organisation of sports events.

## The political promotion of sport at the local level

Although sport has not made its way into the German Fundamental Law, the promotion of sport is enshrined in virtually all of the Länder's constitutions (with the exception of the Land of Hamburg, although it was Germany's official candidate for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic

<footnote n="1">¹ The Grundgesetz has been serving as a constitution since 1949, although it does not bear this name and has never been ratified through a referendum.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² These attempts are certainly not unrelated to the fact that Thomas Bach, the first president of the DOSB (from 2006 to 2013), and appointed president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), had been politically active in the liberal-democrat party (FDP) for over forty years and would see obvious connections between sport and the liberal values that he would politically defend. It must be noted that the intricate links between sport and politics, especially under the Vichy regime, have set the stage in France for the emergence of the ideology of apolitical sport after 1945, which facilitated the construction and autonomy of the French sports area (Defrance, 2000). In Germany, the need to preserve the autonomy of the sports movement has followed another path.</footnote>
Games). Most often, the support and promotion of sport is rather mentioned than detailed, in a short sentence that yet manages to draw links with municipalities and associations of municipalities. Sport is often associated with art and culture (sometimes with science and education). Some of these constitutions address the need for a universal access to sports facilities in more detail.

Besides the inscription in the constitution, the political expression varies from a *Land* to the other: behind the traditional support to universal sport, grassroots sport and high-level sport, the maintenance of sport facilities and the necessary efforts to include people of foreign origin or people with disabilities, a brief analysis of the *Länder*'s institutional communication based on their web portals reveals links between the emphasised themes and the political affiliation of the ministers in charge of sport as well as of the heads of governments.<fnref n="3" />

First of all, it is interesting to observe that sport is attached to the ministry of the interior, public works and homeland at the national level. Sport falls within home affairs, but is not unrelated to patriotism. On the ministry's website, sport is one of the ten issues addressed and presented. There is a clear focus on elite sport, a prerequisite to ensure the international recognition of Germany ('Germany's reputation across the world') and bring the rest of sport (the basis) in its wake. All of the three main aspects developed in this 'sport' theme are related to this goal: maintain its position on the international sport stage. The head of this ministry is Horst Seehofer, who has been heading the Christian Social Union (CSU) since 2008, a party allied with the CDU in power in Bavaria since 1962, of which Horst Seehofer himself was the president from 2008 to 2013 (which earned him, to occupy for one year, the position of president of the federal council, with an annual rotating presidency). Prior to this, he was alternately Minister of Labour, Minister of Health, Minister of Agriculture, and even acting federal president of Germany. This CSU minister in a CDU/SPD/CSU 'great coalition' government sets the tone for his idea of sport, an idea very similar to the one all CDU-led *Länder* (or CSU in Bavaria) adopt, since elite sport and organised sport are the themes almost systematically put forward. Sport is consistently placed under the authority of a representative from the same party as the head of government (this is noteworthy as all *Länder* were led by coalitions at the time of the survey): in six out of the seven relevant ministries, sport is incidentally attached to the ministry of home affairs. The situation is very different – and more contrasted – in the seven *Länder* led by a coalition with an SPD majority. For instance, in the Rhineland-Palatinate Land, health-sport and well-being-sport are put forward (in the general

<footnote n="3">³ This work was carried out in December 2018.</footnote>
presentation, high-level sport is not even mentioned). In Brandenburg, the values of sport, and especially its educational virtues, are advocated. In Lower-Saxony, it is the quality of life that is put forward, in Mecklenburg-Western-Pomerania, it is physical activity, before the associative network is mentioned. It is also in these Länder that the existence and importance of non-organised sport are mentioned most often. In Thuringia, where die Linke is the majority party, the minister in charge of education, youth and sport firstly supports high-level sport, but also integrates non-organised sport. The only Land where the ministry of sport is not headed by the majority party of the coalition is Baden-Württemberg, dominated by the Grüne (although they are allied with the CDU, which is a rare case) and whose minister in charge of culture, youth and sports is a member of the CDU.

Thereby, the way the ministries in charge of sports design sport and prioritise measures to support and promote it may vary from a Land to the other, although they may follow partisan logics. However, sport is not supported or promoted only by national and regional policies: most municipalities and associations of municipalities are also active in this area, relying on the principle of subsidiarity that is supposed to define everyone's responsibilities.

## Supporting sport based on the principles of subsidiarity and participation

Subsidiarity is a societal and political principle based on individual responsibility for public action. The state's obligations must first and always be assumed by the lower level, especially in case of doubt: the region instead of the state, the district (or community) instead of the region, the municipality instead of the district. The higher levels must withdraw in front of the competences of the lower levels (yet they must take their capacities into account and avoid overloading them). More generally, the public intervention of the higher level is required only when the lower level is incapable of assuming the relevant political project on its own. This principle does not apply only to the political-administrative levels: it also encompasses the economy, religious communities, trade unions, associations and even the citizens and families. It is a pluralist view of society. The provisions of the Fundamental Law regarding the sharing of responsibilities between the federal government, Länder and municipalities (and associations of municipalities)<fnref n="4" /> are important for the constitutional situation of sport, even if sport is not explicitly mentioned – and precisely *because* it is not mentioned.

<footnote n="4">⁴ Each Land (possessing its own parliament and government) is subdivided into districts (*Landkreise* or *Kreise*, depending on the Land) headed by a council, with a few cities being independent of the district system (*Kreisfreie Städte*), which have their own council. Each district comprises municipalities (*Gemeinde*), which are also headed by a council. The principle of self-administration of the various levels has increased their autonomy</footnote>
One of the consequences of the principle of subsidiarity is that no city, district or municipality will develop a direct sports policy if a private local organisation can take care of it. In this case, the corresponding council must give the latter the means to meet the objectives set by the council. If there is no one to manage the sports policy, the relevant local administration must take the necessary measures to meet its goals (or resort to the intervention of the higher levels if it is unable to do it on its own, provided that they share objectives with the higher levels).

This principle has been discussed numerous times and has often created confusion: sports associations and clubs saw it as a real chance to demand that public authorities provide them with the necessary funds to carry out their activities. This principle being acknowledged, the analysis of local public sports policies in Germany shows that the priority mission of municipalities is to manage and maintain sports facilities, which are generally made available to local sports associations, to facilitate the development of their activities (Eckl, Wetterich, 2007, 80). However, observations indicate that approximately 30% of German cities are starting to charge the rental of their facilities for the training of children and youth (for adults, the proportion is 50%). This tendency to rent facilities – essentially sports and gymnastics halls – is particularly pronounced in big cities and the south of Germany. This rising trend is linked to the economic and financial crises that have affected Europe since 2008 and resulted in drastic reductions in the funds allocated to sport at every level of the state's intervention (Koebel, 2013).

Some municipalities (especially in the north and west of Germany, but also in big cities) have directly entrusted local sports associations with the management of a part or the entirety of their sports facilities, especially sports fields. Public intervention can also be observed in the support to non-organised sport and physical activity, notably since traditional sports organisations have abandoned them. Anyway, when sports policies are developed at whichever level, it is because the population has expressed a need that must be satisfied, but also because there are votes to win (Daumann, 2015, 308).

Another element must be taken into account to understand the evolution of public policies, and especially sports policies. Throughout the 1960s, various protests (including that of May 1968) have led to the introduction of new forms of citizen participation: preliminary citizen consultation (vorgezogene Bürgerbeteiligung), with the obligation for local authorities to publish their planning intentions soon enough and to account for all of their citizens' criticisms

<footnote>since 1949, especially the communal level, previously regarded as a mere administrative (not a political) level responsible for the application of federal guidelines (Wollmann, 1999).</footnote>
(although the final decision remains at the discretion of the elected councils). At the same time,
the local influence of political parties has induced changes: political parties (and especially
minority groups) have eventually succeeded in imposing that the federal regulations of the
municipal policy give local political parties and locally elected deputies an almost
parliamentary level of control over elected councils and their decisions (right to information
and control over the local administration and its representative). Direct democracy got a second
wind after the reunification of October 1990, because of the popularity of the citizen
movements that led to the fall of the Berlin wall. Two main reforms were undertaken. The first
consisted in the direct election of mayors and the possibility to dismiss them through a
referendum (*Abwahl*) – even if it was not adopted by all Länder at once. The second one was
the introduction of the local referendum,<fnref n="5" /> which can take one of two forms: ‘the right [for
citizens] to initiate a referendum (*Bürgerbegehren*) and the local population’s decision-making
power (*Bürgerentscheid*)’ (Wollmann, 1999, 111). For a local referendum to have a decision-
making power, the proposed reform must obtain a majority vote and there has to be a 25 to
30% quorum of voter turn-out (compared to registered voters); the popular initiative towards a
referendum can only be adopted with a certain quorum, from 10 to 20% of the population
eligible to vote, depending on the Land. The issues that can be addressed are restricted to
important matters coming under the relevant local level (*Selbstverwaltung*), with the exception
of all that is related to purely financial aspects. Local referendums have been on the rise since
the early 2000s. According to one report on this issue,<fnref n="6" /> the use of referendums varies from one
Land to another: it is most widely used in Bavaria – accounting for almost 40% of the total
number of referendums – but the frequency of their use increases with the size of the authorities
(a vote is arranged once per year on average in each of the seven districts of Hamburg). Schools,
sports facilities and bathhouses are among the issues most frequently addressed in local
referendums.

However, in the area of sports, the citizens' decisions that have caused the biggest stir in
German media were the successive refusals to host the Olympic Games in various German
regions. After the referendum of 2011 rejected Munich's candidacy for both the Summer
Olympic Games of 2018, and the Winter Olympic Games of 2022 (that could have taken place
in Munich and two surrounding metropolises, the three cities having rejected their candidacy

<footnote n="5">⁵ Baden-Württemberg is an exception since this *Land* introduced the local referendum and direct election of the mayor in the 1950s.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ *Bürgerbegehrensbericht 2018*, Mehr Demokratie e.V., in Kooperation mit dem Institut für Demokratie- und Partizipationsforschung der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal und der Forschungsstelle Bürgerbeteiligung und direkte Demokratie an der Philipps-Universität Marburg.</footnote>
by a majority vote, including one with over 60% of expressed votes),<fnref n="7" /> then it was the mayor of Hamburg’s turn to fail a local referendum, despite the support of the Ministry of the Interior and the sports movement. Admittedly, it was a close call (51.6% against), but it was an indisputable verdict because of the population’s strong mobilisation (50.1% of registered voters, which is way above most traditional consultations). The population was influenced by NOlympia – a citizen movement already active in Munich, supported by several left-wing parties (especially the Grüne) and trades unions of teachers, students and migrant workers – which led a fierce campaign, with an anti-Olympics petition that gathered over 10,000 signatures and the diffusion via social networks of a shock argumentation<fnref n="8" /> mainly focusing on the issue of funding and its consequences in the long run.

## The organised sports movement

The DOSB is the umbrella organisation of German sport. It was established in 2006 as a result of the merging of the national Olympic Committee and the German Sport Federation (DSB). From 1 January 2018, it comprised 27.4 million memberships in over 92,000 sport clubs. The way the DOSB presents its figures (the DOSB produces its own data) may lead one to think that one out of three Germans is a member of a sports club. The DOSB makes the classic mistake of implying that the number of registered licences corresponds to licence-holders,<fnref n="9" /> which does not account for the fact that people hold multiple licences.<fnref n="10" /> In France, one considers that a licence-holder holds 1.3 licences on average (Louveau, 2002). Let us apply this to Germany, the proportion of licence-holders drops from 33% to approximately 25%, which is close to the 23% produced by the ‘sport’ Eurobarometer for the practice of sport in clubs in Germany.<fnref n="11" /> Since the Eurobarometer only concerns people aged 15 or more, a simple adjustment gives an approximate licence-holder ratio of 25% of the total German population. This figure is still very high.

<footnote n="7">⁷ Depending on the cities, a mere 10 to 20% of voter turn-out is required for the referendum to have a decision-making power (unlike France where this threshold is set at 50% of registered voters).</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ NOlympia, *Argumente fur ein NEIN zu Olympia*, n.d.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ The publicly available statistical document (DOSB, *Bestandserhebung 2018*) introduces a great deal of data on licences. The mistake appears on page 12, where the licence-holders ratio is calculated in relation to the corresponding population (per age category and gender). The overall rate that is presented only reaches 28.9%, because the data this calculation is based on only accounts for the licence-holders counted in each *Land* (in other words, 23.9 million out of 27.4 million in total).</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ At the demand of the DOSB, Boris Rump has produced another executive summary on the diachronic analysis of licence-holders. He has admitted and explained this error, without trying to measure it. He considers that, while the way these figures were produced is questionable, his analysis is still valid over time: DOSB (2017). *Mitgliederentwicklung in Sportvereinen 2000 bis 2015. Bestand, Veränderungen und Perspektiven.*</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ European Commission (2017). *Special Eurobarometer 472 (Sport and physical activity Report)* (p. 48).</footnote>
This imprecision in the interpretation of the number of licence-holders, which results from the fact that multi-memberships are not taken into account, does not interfere with comparative analyses.

The first interesting piece of data addresses the evolution of the number of licence-holders over time. After a virtually uninterrupted growth phase from 1983 to 2013¹² (from 18.4 to almost 28 million licence-holders), the number of licence-holders has been stagnating since 2013. This situation varies from one discipline to another, but football is still leading (7.1 million licence-holders), followed by gymnastics (stable at 5 million licence-holders, which makes it a truly German tradition). Then come tennis and shooting (both with 1.4 million licence-holders and on the decline since 2000, a bit sharper for tennis), and the Alpine Club making it to the disciplines counting over 1 million licence-holders, with a number of licence-holders that has doubled over the last 18 years (from 0.6 to 1.2 million). Another important piece of data concerns the difference between Länder, and especially the low rates observed in the ex-GDR countries, which are half as high as in the rest of Germany. The clubs in this part of Germany have lost half their licence-holders since the fall of the Berlin wall, which means that, given the figures of the migration to the ex-FRG Länder, virtually all migrants were members of sports clubs. Besides this effect of the reunification, some Länder are a bit ‘sportier’ than others, especially in the south of Germany. As for gender equality, as in many other countries, fewer women practise sport than men, with approximately 40% of the total female population. While only 15.6% of football licence-holders are women, this proportion is still almost three times as high as in France (although the latter is experiencing a rise). The second most-practised discipline – gymnastics – is dominated by women (68%).

This strong involvement in sports clubs – also evidenced by the number of volunteers who invest their time in these clubs (6.8 million in 2005)<fnref n="13" /> – makes Germany one of the sportiest countries in the European Union (5th place out of 28).<fnref n="14" /> It is also the European leader in terms of the proportion of people who practise a sport on a regular basis and choose to practise it in a club.

The DOSB regularly asserts its social role and its desire to take charge of the issues expressed in the sport policies of the federal government and the governments at every territorial level

<footnote n="12">¹² Data on the sport practice of Germans (including outside clubs) have been available since the 1970s, but it differs widely depending on the way surveys are conducted</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Out of these 6.8 million, 2.1 occupy specific positions (including nearly 1 million trainers) and 4.7 million are occasional volunteers (Schubert, Horch, Hovemann, 2006, 3).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Special Eurobarometer 472, op. cit. (p. 48), reworked.</footnote>
(tremendous funding issues are at stake due to the principle of subsidiarity): policies for the integration of young people in difficulty, foreign citizens and people of foreign origin, disadvantaged neighbourhoods, people with disabilities, health-sport, etc. It also claims responsibility for an ambitious 'universal sport' policy, affirming that it enables people to break free from ethnic and social barriers. Behind this ideological discourse – and despite a broadened access to sport resulting from the scale of this phenomenon – lie various inequalities revealed by sports sociologists. Up until the 1980s, different sociological analyses have pointed out an over-representation of middle and upper classes in this area, especially in adults, an over-representation of men, even greater among the working class, executive positions and small clubs (Schubert, Horch, Hovemann, 2006), a decrease in the activity rate with age, and an influence of the social background on the choice of disciplines (Haut, Emrich, 2010, 315). These disparities in access to sport practice, including age, gender and ethnic inequalities, were criticised in the 2000s. Serious surveys show that, while more women and elderly people now benefit from greater access to sport, competitive sport remains extremely unequal. The traditional idea of sport – which associates sport, performance and competition – prevails in the working class, where the activity rate is the lowest (Haut, Emrich, 2010). A survey with a broader scope, based on international comparisons, shows that contrary to popular belief, 'vertical' disparities (with respect to the social and professional position, income, qualification level) are still prevalent, while 'horizontal' disparities (gender, age) are less significant when it comes to explaining the inequalities in access to sports practice (Rohrer, Haller, 2015).

## New policies, new trends

Like many other industrialised countries, Germany is diversifying sports practice: sport now has a broader scope and is no longer restricted to its traditional, associative forms. It has won new fields and can now be found in private clubs from the market sector (and especially fitness clubs), in various institutions using sport as a tool for educational, integration, entertainment or business purposes. Together with family or friends, individuals get self-organised to practise physical activities regularly, whether alone, in pairs or in groups. These new fields can also be literal fields, since sport is also practised in places that were not initially designed for this: on the street, in parks, at the office, at home. Activities that would not be labelled as sport – walking or bike-riding to the workplace – are now integrated into policies advocating movement as a means to improve one's health. The initiators of these policies – especially the Länder and all local authorities – are aware that practising sport outside clubs is as important as, if not more than, the traditional ways of practising sport, and invest more and more in the
development of spaces facilitating active mobilities by securing them, and increasingly fund
the stakeholders who use sport as a means of integration or prevention. These new trends –
implying a broader acceptance of the notion of sport – have not escaped the DOSB, which
wants to convince local authorities that it is able to implement their policies at every local level
and in (almost) every sector, particularly as it also allows them to win new members. This is
how local sport policies and those of the traditional sports movement have evolved over the
years.

This evolution is particularly perceptible in the fields of integration through sport and of the
development of social and sports activities.

A survey conducted in Baden-Württemberg on local sports policies has demonstrated that, at every territorial level, actions targeting young people – in the sense of prevention – are a priority. However, the survey shows that this priority is more often planned than realised (Eckl, Wetterich, 2007). Local policies often remain limited to supporting the traditional sports movement, maybe because the sports administrative executives themselves are pure products of this sector and/or former sports champions (Koebel, 2013).

However, policies for the integration of marginalised populations through sport (*Integration sozialer Randgruppen*) were developed in many sectors, targeting migrants, deviant young people, girls and women, homeless people, prisoners and drug addicts, among others. Various activities have been used to meet these objectives of integration, prevention or empowerment: certain traditional sports (such as football, basketball or martial arts), climbing, slackline, self-defence, but also artistic activities or dancing. Over the years, the sectors of sport and of social work have gradually come together, the integration of immigrants having played a major role (Koebel, Stahl, 2013). A partially autonomous organisation of the DOSB named Deutsche Sportjugend (DSJ) is behind this work, initially called ‘the social offensive of sport’ (Nippe, 2000), which welcomes all audiences without any formal membership.<fnref n="15" /> Sport is even legally recognised as a social work tool since 1991, thus securing significant funding for the organisations that take these actions (Seibel, 2007; Michels, 2007). In 1989, a programme is implemented at the federal level, first named ‘Sport for all – sport with repatriates’ and renamed ‘Integration through sport’ in 2001, to account for the broadening of the programme to all populations of immigrant background. More recently, it has also been including refugees.

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ If this youth organisation has adopted this new perspective, it is also because it was deprived of the organisation of high-level sport in the early 1970s, because the success of the FRG in sport had become a national political issue and the objective was to counter GDR’s use of sport as a tool for the international legitimisation of the communist regime (Teichler, 2010; Koebel, Stahl, 2013).</footnote>
As in France, social workers have long resisted using sport as a prevention tool, because of the ideology of performance, competition and elitism associated with it, but also because of the authoritarian nature of the sports organisations. This resistance has gradually faded. In the 1990s, most social educators were willing to use sport in their educational and prevention activities. These methods have even been integrated into their training curriculum (Seibel, 2007). As for the traditional sports associations that enter the programme of integration through sport, they frequently resort to social workers in the framework of their actions targeting marginalised people.

## Conclusion

Germany is one of the most sport-oriented countries in Europe, as evidenced by the high number of memberships in clubs from the traditional sports movement, supervised by a single organisation and largely funded by public authorities at all local levels, in compliance with the principle of subsidiarity, although there are slight variations depending on the political orientation. However, sports practices now include other modes that partly escape this hegemonic organisation: sport is increasingly seen as a tool to support health policies and integrate marginalised populations, involving a growing range of stakeholders. Despite a growing number of people practising sports and an ever-improving access for women and elderly people, sport practice remains socially unequal.

## Bibliography

- Daumann, F., 2015, *Grundlagen der Sportökonomie* (2. Aufl.). Konstanz/München: UVK-Verl.-Ges. & UVK/Lucius.

- Defrance, J., 2000, *La politique de l'apolitisme. Sur l'autonomisation du champ sportif. Politix*, Vol. 13, no. 50, pp. 13-27.

- Eckl, S., Wetterich, J., 2007, *Sportförderung und Sportpolitik in der Kommune*. Berlin: LIT Verlag.

- Haut, J., Emrich, E., 2010, *Sport für alle, Sport für manche: soziale Ungleichheiten im pluralisierten Sport*. *Sportwissenschaft*, Vol. 41, pp. 315-326.

- Koebel, M., 2013, *La territorialisation des politiques sportives dans les villes moyennes: une comparaison franco-allemande*. *Revue juridique et économique du sport (Jurisport)*, Vol. 136 (novembre), pp. 42-45.

- Koebel, M., Stahl, S., 2013, *Die Entwicklung der Sportsozialarbeit in Frankreich und Deutschland. Zwischen lokaler Integration und nationaler Identität*. *Revue d'Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande*, Vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 501-522.
Louveau, C., 2002, Enquêter sur les pratiques sportives des Français: tendances lourdes et problèmes méthodologiques. In: Mignon, P. (et al.), *Les pratiques sportives en France*. Paris: INSEP-Éditions, pp. 135-154.

Michels, H., 2007. Hauptsache Sport. *Sozial Extra*, no. 9/10, pp. 13–16.

Nippe, M., 2000. Die ‘Soziale Offensive des Sports’ fing in der Sportjugend an. In: Deutsche Sportjugend (eds.), *50 Jahre Deutsche Sportjugend. In einem Jugendberghaus fing es an*. Frankfurt/Main: Hofmann.

Rohrer, T., Haller, M., 2015, Sport und soziale Ungleichheit – Neue Befunde aus dem internationalen Vergleich. *Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie*, Vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 57–82.

Schubert, M., Horch, H.-D., Hovemann, G., 2006, *Ehrenamtliches Engagement in Sportvereinen*. Köln: DOSB/Bundesinstitut für Sportwissenschaft.

Seibel, B., 2007, Sportbezogene Kinder- und Jugendarbeit als Aufgabenfeld der Sozialen Arbeit. In: Seibel, B. (eds), *Sport und Soziale Arbeit*. Berlin: LIT, pp. 9–33.

Teichler, H.J., 2010. Sport und Sportpolitik in der DDR. In Krüger, M., Langenfeld, H. (eds), *Handbuch Sportgeschichte*. Schorndorf: Hofmann, pp. 227–238.

Wollmann, H., 1999, Le système local en Allemagne: vers un nouveau modèle de démocratie locale? In: CURAPP/CRAPS, *La démocratie locale. Représentation, participation et espace public*. Paris: PUF, pp. 103–116.

Notes