TSG Hoffenheim stadium guide for visitors

The fourth position on 50+1

This series has now covered three ways a German club can stand in relation to the ownership rule. Hoffenheim is the fourth, and it is the most interesting because it moved.

• Union Berlin — the rule as intended. The members own the club and physically rebuilt the ground.
• RB Leipzig — the letter of the rule with about twenty-one members, which the Federal Cartel Office has called a circumvention.
• Bayer Leverkusen — a written exemption for a backer of more than twenty years' standing. The rule working as designed.
• Hoffenheim — granted the same kind of exemption in December 2014, when Dietmar Hopp, the SAP co-founder who had played for the club as a boy and funded it for two decades, took majority voting control. Then, in November 2024, he transferred those rights back to the members and the club returned to 50+1.

Hoffenheim spent fifteen years as the most disliked club in Germany — a village side lifted from the amateur leagues to the Bundesliga by one man's money, and the target of some genuinely ugly supporter campaigns. Whatever you make of how they arrived, they are now under the same ownership rule as everybody else, by choice.

Getting there

The first thing to understand is geography. The club is called Hoffenheim; the stadium is in Sinsheim, about six kilometres away, because the village could never have hosted a ground this size.

• By train: Sinsheim Museum/Arena station serves the stadium directly.
• From Heidelberg: around half an hour, and Heidelberg is by far the better base — one of the most beautiful towns in Germany and an easy ride away.
• From Stuttgart or Frankfurt: both around an hour.
• Match ticket and transport: as at most German grounds, the ticket covers local transport on the day.

Tickets

The German pattern: no document demanded, a queue behind season-ticket holders and members, and general sale a few weeks out. Buy from the club.

Hoffenheim have the smallest natural support base of any club in this series relative to their stadium — thirty thousand seats for a village and a small town. Ordinary fixtures are among the easiest tickets in the Bundesliga, which makes this a sensible choice if you want a German ground without a fight.

Where away fans go

Visiting supporters get the allocation German league rules require, and travelling supports frequently outnumber the home crowd's noise here. Arrangements are set per fixture. Neutrals should take a side stand.

The ground itself

The PreZero Arena opened in 2009, purpose-built for the club's arrival in the Bundesliga. Thirty thousand seats, fully covered, modern, comfortable, and honest about what it is: a stadium built because a club suddenly needed one, in a place that had never had one.

Expect gaps in the stands at an ordinary fixture and an atmosphere generated substantially by the away end. That is the trade here, and it is worth knowing before you travel rather than after.

Eating and drinking at the ground

Bratwurst, Currywurst, pretzels and full-strength beer, with Baden wine alongside. Payment by stadium card: load it on arrival, cash out afterwards. Cups carry a Pfand deposit.

Sinsheim and the Kraichgau before the match

What to see

This is the part that turns an ordinary fixture into a proper day out, and it is right next to the ground:

• The Technik Museum Sinsheim — a vast technology museum a short walk from the stadium, with hundreds of cars, locomotives and aircraft. On the roof, mounted nose-up as if climbing, are a Concorde and a Tupolev Tu-144 — the only place on earth where you can walk through both supersonic airliners in one afternoon. You can go inside them.
• Heidelberg — half an hour away: the castle above the Neckar, the old bridge, the oldest university in Germany. If you are here for a weekend, stay there.
• The Kraichgau — the gentle hill country around Sinsheim, full of small wine villages and castles, and pleasant to drive or cycle through.
• Speyer — forty minutes west, with a Romanesque imperial cathedral on the UNESCO list and a sister technology museum.

What to eat and drink

Baden and Kraichgau cooking, which is closer to French than most of Germany:

• Maultaschen — the Swabian filled pasta parcels, on menus across this region too.
• Flammkuchen — thin dough with crème fraîche, onion and bacon.
• Zwiebelkuchen with Neuer Wein in autumn.
• Baden wine — Riesling and Spätburgunder from the surrounding hills.

Common questions

Is Hoffenheim still owned by Dietmar Hopp?

Not in the sense that matters. He transferred majority voting rights back to the members in November 2024 and the club is under 50+1 again. Sources written before that say otherwise.

Is the stadium actually in Hoffenheim?

No — it is in Sinsheim, about six kilometres away. The village of Hoffenheim has around three thousand residents and no stadium, which is why nobody sensible tries to drive there.

Will I be treated badly as a visitor?

No. The hostility Hoffenheim attracts is aimed at the club's origins by other clubs' organised supporter groups, not at people in the stand. Stewarding is professional, the home crowd is unremarkable, and a neutral has an entirely easy afternoon here — easier than at most grounds in this series.

Is it worth going?

For the ticket availability and for the Technik Museum next door, yes. For atmosphere, this is the weakest ground in the Bundesliga and it would be dishonest to say otherwise.

A Concorde on a museum roof, an easy ticket, and the club that handed its 50+1 exemption back. Add Sinsheim to your bucket list and stay in Heidelberg.