Club ProfileAnnex
Steckbrief – Facts, figures and milestones
Verein für Leibesübungen Wolfsburg e.V., founded on September 12, 1945, spun off its professional football division in 2001 to create today's VfL Wolfsburg-Fußball GmbH — known simply as VfL Wolfsburg.
Through a special DFL dispensation, the Bundesliga's standard 50+1 rule is circumvented, meaning the "Wolves" have been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, independent of the registered club, since 2007.
With approximately 20,000 members, VfL Wolfsburg are among the largest sports clubs in Lower Saxony and, in the 2019/20 season, the only Lower Saxon football team in the Bundesliga. The first team have played (as of December 2019) in the top German division without interruption since their 1997 promotion, winning the German championship in 2009 and the DFB-Pokal in 2015.
The first team's home ground is the Volkswagen Arena in the Allerpark, holding 30,000 spectators. Opened in 2002, the arena is also used for concerts. The VfL-Stadion am Elsterweg, inaugurated at the club's founding in 1947, holds 21,600 and is still used by the women's youth teams. It is now partly listed as a protected monument.
