Dukes

Ingolstadt is a Bavarian city that owes its name in the local game to its own past — the club took the title "Dukes" from the city's history as capital of the Duchy of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, and it began life in October 2007 as an offshoot of the multi-sport club TV 1861 Ingolstadt.

What followed was a climb through five divisions in nine years: the Landesliga Bayern in 2009, the Verbandsliga in 2010, the Bayernliga in 2011, the Regionalliga Süd in 2014, and GFL2 Süd in 2016, which finally put the Dukes into the German Football League for the first time. They reached the GFL quarter-finals in that debut top-flight season, 2017, and matched it again in 2023. A brief drop to the Regionalliga in 2021 barely slowed them down — they won GFL2 Süd once more in 2022 and went straight back up.

Then, in February 2024, the club pulled itself out of the GFL by choice, citing a restructuring of the organisation, and dropped all the way to the Landesliga Bayern, the fifth tier. They finished third there that season. In 2025 they did not lose a single game in the league and carried that run into the playoff final.

The Dukes play in black and white at the ESV-Stadion, and their sharpest rivalry runs against the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns, a fixture shaped less by any trophy between them than by how often the two sides have ended up on the same path through the divisions.

The club has never lifted a German Bowl. What it has instead is a squad still fielding a full season without a loss in 2025.