as Silvio Bankert, Marcel Schlosser and Jan Glinker, in order to increase quality in the squad. Magdeburg won the Regionalliga Nordost and thereby earned the right to take part in the promotion round to the 3. Liga. They faced Kickers Offenbach, winners of Regionalliga Südwest. Magdeburg won 1–0 at home on 27 May 2015 and 3–1 away on 31 May 2015 and returned to third level after 7 years. This also meant that the club would compete in a fully professional league for the first time since reunification. Magdeburg finished the inaugural 3. Liga season in fourth place and qualified for 2016–17 DFB-Pokal. Finishing in 1st place at the end of the 2017–18 season Magdeburg achieved promotion to 2. Bundesliga. Their spell in the 2. Bundesliga was short lived and on 12 May 2019 they were relegated back to the 3. Liga alongside MSV Duisburg. Stadium For over 40 years, 1. FC Magdeburg's home stadium was the Ernst-Grube-Stadion. In 2005, the stadium which had decayed rapidly after German reunification was demolished to make way for a new, football-only stadium. In December 2006 the new Stadion Magdeburg was opened, it is fully covered and offers room for 27,250 spectators. As it is usual in Germany, there is standing room for 4,500 people that can be converted to seats to make the stadium a 25,000 capacity all-seater for international matches. In July 2009, local ISP and cable TV company MDCC announced they had signed a five-year sponsorship agreement with the stadium operator under which the stadium would be known as MDCC-Arena. Fans While the average attendance has had its ups and downs in recent years, 1. FC Magdeburg traditionally had a large number of supporters. At an average away match, the club will bring several hundred fans, but for important matches or derbies, this number can increase into thousands. 5,000 fans accompanied their club to the away match against Eintracht Braunschweig in the 2007–08 season. A similar number traveled to the match against VfL Wolfsburg II. While there are claims that in 1983 some 25,000 fans traveled to Berlin to see the FDGB-Pokal final against FC Karl-Marx-Stadt in the Stadion der Weltjugend, Berliner Zeitung only reports 8,000 Magdeburg fans. After the new stadium was opened, fans were found in two different sections for a time, but are now mainly found behind the goal in sections 3 through 5. They refer to themselves