Bayern Munich’s honorary president, Uli Hoeneß, has officially confirmed that the club intends to buy the stadium in Unterhaching and make it the new home of the German champions’ women’s team. During the Sport Marke Medien congress in Munich, the 73-year-old revealed that the municipality wants to sell the venue, and Bayern is ready to acquire it for around €7.5 million.

Hope for higher attendances

The move from the small stadium at the Bayern Campus, which can accommodate only 2,500 spectators, to Sportpark Unterhaching is also expected to help the club meet UEFA’s requirements for international matches. The new—but already established—arena offers around 15,000 seats, six times more than the current ground.

Hoeneß admitted that despite the women’s team’s success, generating interest in matches in Germany remains a challenge. In Spain or England the top games are packed. Here, you have to bang the drum to get 20,000 spectators. And when they do come, we hug each other with joy, he said. According to the former club president, a larger stadium may open new opportunities and improve attendance, although he stressed that it’s not so simple. He added that although he is now a friend of women’s football, that wasn’t always the case — but today they really can play well.

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SpVgg Unterhaching steps aside, Bayern enters the picture

Sportpark Unterhaching does not belong to the local club SpVgg Unterhaching but to the municipality. The fourth-division side is only a tenant, and despite earlier plans, it let its own purchase option expire this summer. This opened the door for Bayern to take over the facility. The president of SpVgg Unterhaching, Manni Schwabl, emphasized that the purchase alone is not enough: Floodlights, lighting parameters, safety issues, pitch heating — all of that requires investment. We weren’t sure we could manage it, he said.

Sportpark Unterhaching was built in the early 1990s and expanded after SpVgg Unterhaching’s promotion to the Bundesliga to meet German FA requirements. Its distinctive features include the Alpine-style roof structure of the main stand, the two-level club facilities behind the south stand, and the team tunnel running underneath it. In subsequent years the stadium underwent modernizations, including reinforcement of stands and upgrades to safety infrastructure. After partial closures in the mid-2010s, the necessary repairs allowed the venue to be fully reopened. In 2018 the pitch was replaced with a hybrid surface.

The Sportpark has hosted numerous sporting events, including Bundesliga matches, Germany women’s national team and youth team fixtures, as well as several unexpected SpVgg Unterhaching victories in the DFB-Pokal. The venue is well connected — about a 15-minute walk from the Fasanenpark S-Bahn station.