A membership-based club with over 85,000 members, VfB is the largest sports club in Baden-Wrttemberg and the eighth-largest football club in Germany. It has departments for fistball, field hockey, track and field, table tennis, and football referees, all of which compete only at the amateur level.

An angry 2001 league meeting between the pair was notable for ten yellow cards and three red being shown (a Bundesliga record for indiscipline). However, Dortmund soon fell heavily into debt, and a 2m loan from Bayern in 2004 was a major reason for them being saved from bankruptcy.