Borussia Dortmund

Borussia Dortmund (officially in German Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e.V. Dortmund, or Borussia Dortmund, pronounced /boˈʁʊsi̯a ˈdɔʁtmʊnt/, under the corporate identity Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA), abbreviated as BVB, is a sports organization based in Dortmund, in the Rhine-Ruhr region of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded on 19 December 1909 as a football club, the activity for which it is mainly known and in which it came to rank as the second most decorated team in the country. It plays in the top German division, the Bundesliga, where it is likewise second all-time with eight titles, or fourth when counting the different historical championships overall.

It completes its honors list with five German Cups and six Supercups at the national level; and at the international level it was European Cup Winners' Cup champion in 1966, being the first German club to win an international title, UEFA Champions League champion in 1997 (and runner-up in 2013 and 2024), and Intercontinental Cup champion in 1997. It was also runner-up in the UEFA Cup in 1993 and 2002, and in the 1997 UEFA Super Cup. It is, moreover, one of the fifteen teams in Europe that have played a final in the three main UEFA competitions, and the only German club, along with FC Bayern Munich, to be crowned world champion by FIFA.

Under its motto "Echte Liebe" (True Love), "die Borussen" are known for their fervent fan base. Its stadium, Signal Iduna Park (historically Westfalenstadion), has a capacity of 81,365 spectators (the largest in Germany), and is classified as a top-category stadium by UEFA, in addition to having the highest average attendance of all football clubs in the world. Among them is "the Yellow Wall", in reference to the team's color and the appearance given by the crowd of fans on its steep south stand. As of 2022 it has more than 157,000 members, surpassed in Germany only by Fußball-Club Gelsenkirchen-Schalke and FC Bayern Munich, its main rivals, with whom it contests "the Revierderby" and "Der Klassiker". Although historically its bitterest feud is with the mining club, one of the biggest rivalries in German football, it came to play a Champions League final against the Bavarians, a rivalry that has become heated in recent years over the country's supremacy.

In terms of Deloitte's annual Football Money League, Dortmund was ranked in 2015 as the second richest sports club in Germany and the twelfth richest football team in the world. In addition, under the direction of Michael Zorc in the 2010s, it built a good reputation for spotting and developing young talent, for which it remained focused on developing a structured and prosperous youth academy system.