David Conn- 26 September 2012 Secrets of the Bundesliga's success range from cheaper tickets to standing room in stadiums and supporters on club boards.

At their first home Premier League match this season, Chelsea, owned by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, beat Reading 4-2 in front of 41,733 all-seated supporters whose season tickets at Stamford Bridge, apart from a small family area, cost a minimum £750. Last season's champions in Germany's Bundesliga, Borussia Dortmund, began this one by beating Werder Bremen 2-1, watched by 80,645 people, including 24,454 fans in a vast standing area, paying €187 (£148) for their season tickets.

That gulf in price and experience illustrates a profound difference in philosophy between hyper-commercialised, "free-market" English football and the more democratic German approach to what we used to call "the people's game". In both countries, football has been revitalised since the grim end of the 1980s, when 96 Liverpool supporters were killed in English football's worst disaster at Hillsborough, and average crowds in the Bundesliga sank to 17,291.

German football has staged a recovery every bit as remarkable as that of the English game, but without surrendering some of the popular traditions, such as standing areas for fans and cheaper tickets. In 1993, contemplating outbreaks of hooliganism at Bundesliga grounds, the German FA, the Deutscher Fussball Bund, considered following England's lead and making all-seat stadiums compulsory. It decided to keep standing areas, in a statement cherished by the Football Supporters Federation in England: "Football, being a people's sport, should not banish the socially disadvantaged from its stadia, and it should not place its social function in doubt."

Just this year, the English FA told a Commons select committee for culture, media and sport inquiry that it considered issues such as ticket prices to be outside its jurisdiction. The general secretary, Alex Horne, said the FA believed in a "free-market approach" to club ownership.

In Germany, the Bundesliga clubs are still large membership associations, owned and controlled by their supporters, a remarkable adherence to a mutual constitution in this hyper-commercial era. There are exceptions: Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkeusen have historically been the works teams of Volkswagen and the pharmaceutical company Bayer respectively, and Hoffenheim is owned by a software entrepreneur. The others remain associations, although most have formed a subsidiary company to run the football team itself.

A league regulation, maintained by the clubs, holds that these football companies must be majority owned (50% plus one of the shares) by its member association. So even the mightiest of clubs, the multimillion-pound giants on the European stage Bayern Munich and Dortmund, are majority-controlled by their supporter-members. Bayern, Chelsea's opponents in last season's European Champions League final, have 185,000 members who own 82% of the football company itself; 9% stakes have been sold for vast sponsorship fortunes to the German corporate giants Audi and Adidas.

The way the clubs work in practice varies, but all the member-owned clubs incorporate democracy. Now they are mostly structured like major German companies, with a management board running day-to-day operations, and a supervisory board appointing the directors and overseeing their performance. The members of the supervisory board are elected at an annual general meeting, at which the supporter-members, according to a 50%+1 regulation, have a permanent majority. So, the supporters exercise direct, democratic control over the great German football clubs. The management board is delegated to run the club, it in turn delegates the football decisions to a coach and their staff, and the fans turn up to watch the fruits of their labours.

"Football clubs are social and cultural institutions and not just businesses like any other," says Antonia Hagemann, head of European development at Supporters Direct, which campaigns for more supporter involvement in British football clubs. "Democratic structures mean clubs are run openly and transparently; boards are held accountable, there is a certain stability in place, ownership doesn't change so democratically run clubs tend to follow a longer term vision."

Three years ago, the 50% + 1 rule was challenged by Hannover 96, whose president had visions of Premier League-style stock market flotations, but the Bundesliga clubs solidly upheld it, by 32 votes to Hannover's one (three clubs abstained).

Jens Wagner, a Hamburg representative of the German football supporters group Unsere Kurve, which campaigned passionately for the rule to be maintained, said: "German football is not perfect but we do not want to be like England, where the clubs are owned by one rich man who puts money in. That causes inflation and instability, and it is in the spirit of clubs for there to be democracy."

Since its surprisingly late formation as a fully professional national league in 1963 (England's Football League began in 1888), the Bundesliga has incorporated financial regulations designed to encourage clubs to live within their means and not rack up huge debts. Refined over the years, this German system became the basis for Europe's governing body, Uefa, when it considered introducing its "financial fair play" rules, which require lossmaking clubs to move towards breaking even.

It has not always been adhered to in Germany – Dortmund almost went bust in the late 1990s under the cost of expanding their Signal Iduna Park stadium to the huge capacity that has since been the foundation of the club's more recent success. Last year, the clubs collectively made a €52.5m (£43m) profit, after tax, and reduced their liabilities, while Bayern reached the Champions League final and Bundesliga crowds, averaging 44,293, were the highest in the world.

"The Bundesliga is remaining true to its principles and maintaining its reliance on the factors which have made a decisive contribution to the success of the professional game in Germany in recent decades: stability, continuity and proximity to fans," said Dr Reinhard Rauball, the German league association president.

Many English football supporters, offered no alternative by the Premier League and FA, look to the sporting principles maintained by the Germans with envy and admiration.{jcomments on}

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