FC St. Pauli was founded in a period in which football was booming: whilst the majority of the first footballers from 1870 onwards came from the educated class, football in the 1920’s increasingly became a mass sport.
Between 1910 and 1920, the number of football clubs in Germany trebled and besides active players, more and more people were watching football: in 1920, just two decades after the Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB) was formed, the games of its championship finals were watched by over 11,000 people on average. In 1930, the number was already up to 20,000. Sometime later, the DFB welcomed its one millionth member.
Also, FC St. Pauli profited from this development: in 1925, the club had 13 adult and youth teams and in 1932, this number had increased to 28: the third highest number in Hamburg.
From 1933 onwards, smaller clubs had to merge with clubs with higher numbers of members, FC St. Pauli was praised by the “Hanseatische Sportzeitung” newspaper as “large, healthy, strong and viable”.