Bayer 04 Leverkusen Fußball GmbH, also known as Bayer 04 Leverkusen [ˌbaɪ̯ɐ ˈleːvɐˌkuːzn̩], Bayer Leverkusen, Leverkusen or simply Bayer, is a German football club based in Leverkusen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club plays in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system, and host matches at the BayArena.
The club was founded in 1904 by employees of the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, whose headquarters are in Leverkusen and from which the club draws its name. It was formerly the best-known department of TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen, a sports club whose members also participate in athletics, gymnastics, basketball and other sports including the RTHC Bayer Leverkusen (rowing, tennis and hockey). In 1999 the football department was separated from the sports club and is now a separate entity formally called Bayer 04 Leverkusen GmbH.
Bayer Leverkusen have won one DFB-Pokal and one UEFA Cup. Their local rivals are 1. FC Köln.
HC TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen is a Germany women's handball club from Leverkusen representing Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the Handball-Bundesliga Frauen.
Bayer Leverkusen won six national championships between 1965 and 1980, and six more titles in a row between 1982 and 1987, its most successful period. It was the only team from West Germany to reach the European Cup's final before the country's reunification, in 1984, and seven years later it also played the EHF Women's Cup's final. In 2005 it finally won its first international title, a Challenge Cup. In recent years it has won the 2010 German Cup and reached the EHF Cup and Cup Winners' Cup's semifinals.
The origin of Bayer Leverkusen women's football section lies at the SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach, which in the 1970s and 1980s was the dominating club in German women's football. In that period Bergisch Gladbach won the national women's football championship nine times which today is still the record. They also won the DFB-Pokal three times. After the inception of the Bundesliga in 1990 their performance declined through the 1990s, eventually leading to relegation.
In 1996 the women's team moved from SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach to TuS Köln rrh.. At Köln the team played mostly second-tier football with a few seasons in the third tier in between. Their greatest success was a semi-final appearance in the 2007–08 cup. However the team was not able to find sponsors, that would help to realize the team's ambitions of playing Bundesliga football again. Contemporaneously Bayer Leverkusen pronounced their interest to establish a women's football section of their own. On 25 June 2008 the women's football department of TuS Köln rrh. disbanded to join Bayer Leverkusen.