DFB announces record membership figures

The German Football Association (DFB) has announced new record membership figures for 2010.

A total of 6,756,562 members were registered in 2010 – which means that for the first time in the DFB's 110-year history, the 6.7m mark has been surpassed. Compared with 2009, this is an increase of just over 72,000 members.

These numbers have been recorded despite a decline in Germany's total population of 0.8% between 2005 and 2009, and a decline of 6.27% of new children at primary schools. "It makes it even more pleasing that we have seen an increase of 10.11% in girls and boys playing football in these years," said DFB president Theo Zwanziger.

The figures also maintain football's status as the No1 sport in Germany, while the DFB remains the biggest association in Germany's Olympic Sports Association (DOSB). There is also an encouraging rise in the numbers of women and girls playing the game – by 27,477 members to 1,050,301. As recently as five years ago, the DFB had 870,633 female members – a growth of 17.1% in the intervening period.

"These are, of course, very pleasing increase rates, which prove that women's and girls' football has increasingly become a popular trend sport in the past years, and that our measures with respect to the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup have been positively implemented," said Hannelore Ratzenburg, the DFB's vice-president for women's and girls' football.

In Germany, a total of 177,039 teams are now enrolled under the DFB's roof, roughly half of them falling into the category of boys aged 14 and under (82,599). There are 62,108 teams for men aged 18 and older, as well as 18,326 teams for boys aged between 15 and 18, plus 8,665 girls' teams and 5,341 women's teams – an increase of 924 for all female teams combined.

Almost half of the new members came from the Mittelrhein Regional Football Association (35,493), while Bavaria's football association is still the largest with more than 1.47 million members ahead of its Westphalian counterpart (0.84m).