German FA membership grows, boosted by more women's teams

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German Football Association (DFB) increased its annual membership by 46,000 to reach a total of more than 7.09 million, boosted mainly by more women players and active seniors, it said on Thursday.

The world's largest national football association, whose team won the World Cup in 2014 but crashed out following the group stage of this year's tournament in Russia, grew for the seventh straight year in terms of membership.

Some 147 more women's teams were formed last season compared to 2017 for a total of 5966 women's teams.

The overall number of registered teams, however, dropped by more than 1.5 percent to 154,887, it said.

"The increase in membership continued to be led by an increase in seniors and women," the DFB said in a statement.

"Part of the increase, just like in past years, is also down to fan club membership."

The DFB, which also registered some 45,000 new foreigners in their clubs this year, is bidding to host Euro 2024.

Turkey is also bidding for the event, with Europe's governing football body UEFA to elect the winner next week.

(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann, editing by Pritha Sarkar)