On the day before the club take on Borussia Dortmund in Sinsheim (Wednesday, 20:00 CET), Bundesliga outfit TSG 1899 Hoffenheim have announced their decision to donate the additional revenue from the top-match ticket surcharge that BVB fans have had to pay and to forego all such price increases in the future.

On Monday evening, following calls for a boycott from its supporters, BVB had to send 800 of the approximately 3,000 tickets allocated to away supporters back to Sinsheim. Hans-Joachim Watzke (Chief Executive Officer) and Carsten Cramer (Director of Marketing and Sales) followed this up by sending a personal letter to TSG's major shareholder, Dietmar Hopp, in which they expressed their disappointment at the top-match surcharge.

Dietmar Hopp said: "TSG 1899 Hoffenheim has a real interest in making football and all of the values associated with the sport accessible to all people. In order to demonstrate this in the long term, I have come to the agreement with Hans-Joachim Watzke that we will donate the additional revenue from the top-match ticket surcharge to the BVB Learning Centre."

A flagship project, the Learning Centre is an initiative launched by the BVB "leuchte auf" (light up) foundation. It is an education institution within Signal Iduna Park which uses an attractive location for learning in order to offer youths between the ages of 13 and 17 educational programmes to which they would only have rare access in school. Among others, the topic of "civil courage" plays a particularly important role at the Learning Centre. Educational modules are implemented at an operational level by social workers and special needs teachers in workshops. More than 4,000 youths visit the BVB Learning Centre each year.

"For the benefit of our fans, we are delighted that TSG Hoffenheim have promised reasonable prices for the future and would like to thank Dietmar Hopp for exercising his personal influence," said Hans-Joachim Watzke.