Bundesliga promotion

[hottoddy7]

I was just wondering if someone could let me know how promotion works in germany. In england the top two go up with a playoff for the third spot. I was wondering if it is like this in germany as well or if say the top three 2nd division teams are automatically promoted.

[Grizzly]

Top three 2nd BL teams are automatically promoted. One tier down, the top 2 teams from each of the north and south divisions of the 3rd division are promoted into 2nd, thus 4 teams go up into 2nd division.

[Andrew W]

Grizz, how does that work if the four worst teams in BL2 are from one geographical area, say the north? So do they demote teams geographically or do they just reshuffle the whole deck at the third tier and bump maybe two teams that are closer geographically to the south.

Sorry, that's a bit convoluted, but I'm truly interested.

[beachesl]

I think it's what they do in they do with Serie C1, C2 and D in Italy, as well as Conference North and South and under in England, don't they ?

In England they try to deal with only the relegated/promoted clubs in reassigning geographically, but the leagues have authourity to meet and reassign other clubs in the league if it gets really skewed.

http://www.tonykempster.btinternet.co.uk/promrelrules.htm I think the same principle applies in Italy. The overiding principle is that they try to get by without shuffling the whole deck.

Also, when they decide who is promoted and relegated, where the club is from has no bearing (they don't try , for instance , to relegate one from the south and one from the nouth), except when you get into the very very bottom divisions. Here is a chart about the lower leagues in Germany:

"German "Division" Name of League(s) Notes

1st Professional 1. Bundesliga (Erste Bundesliga) Bottom 3 relegated

2nd Professional 2. Bundesliga (Zweite Bundesliga) Top 3 promoted; bottom 4 relegated

National Amateur Regionalliga Nord and Sued Top 2 from each are promoted

State Amateur Oberliga (Ten in existence) Usually only champion is promoted to Regionalliga

District Amateur Verbandsliga (20-25 in existence) Usually only champion is promoted to Oberliga

Subdistrict Amateur Bezirksliga (hundreds) Promotion/Relegation depends on District

City Amateur Kreisliga A, B, C, D (thousands) Promotion/Relegation depends on District"

[note that the (hundreds) and (thousands) at the end refers to number of leagues, not clubs!]

source:

http://www.tompgalvin.com/features/soccer1.htm

The "usually" is because there are all kinds of licensing requirements concerning administration, finance and facilities that may prevent a lot of clubs from otherwise moving up (and thus sometimes also allowing other clubs to avoid moving down).

[Grizzly]

The third divisions can expand to 19 teams if 3 teams from its area get relegated. If 4 teams get relegated from the same area I think they would relegate an extra team from the effected division although I don't think this has ever happened. There are also some teams that can move from north to south. Erfurt was upset to have to play many years in the Regionalliga South while all the other former East German teams including nearby Jena played in the north. They did probably have a slightly easier time in promoting to 2nd BL but missed out on years of crowd revenue as instead of playing their traditional rivals they played teams from south-west Germany who their fans were unfamiliar with. The actual procedure used to calculate who relegates and promotes under such circumstances is very complicated and changes regularly so it isn't understood by most German fans either. Sometimes at the end of the year there are complicated scenarios where one team's fate is dependent on what happens a division higher. The information posted by beachesl is largely correct but there is presently 8 oberligas not 10 each promoting one team to the 3rd. The north east oberliga is divided into a north and south division whose champions play a promotion playoff.