Entry into the Bundesliga

soon after, Germany's first professional football league, the Fußball-Bundesliga, was formed and HSV was one of 16 clubs invited to join that first season. Hamburger SV currently holds the distinction of being the only original Bundesliga side to have played continuously in the top flight – without ever having been relegated – since the formation of the league in 1963. They had shared that special status with Eintracht Frankfurt and 1. FC Kaiserslautern until 1996, and with 1. FC Köln until 1998. Altogether, 49 other sides have come and gone since the league's inception. The Bundesliga celebrated its 40th anniversary on 24 August 2004 with a match between "The Dinosaur", as the club has been affectionately nicknamed due to its old age, and Bayern Munich, the league's most successful side. What is even more remarkable is a related, but less well-known, distinction HSV holds: they have played in the country's top flight league continuously since 1919, never having experienced relegation.

HSV went undefeated between 16 January 1982 and 29 January 1983—a string of 36 games that still stands as a Bundesliga record.

In August 2004, HSV was upset in the early rounds of the German Cup by regional league side SC Paderborn 07. The match became one of the most infamous in recent football history when it was discovered that referee, Robert Hoyzer, had accepted money from a Croatian gambling syndicate to fix the match, which he did, awarding two penalties to Paderborn and sending off Hamburg's player Emile Mpenza. The resulting scandal became the biggest in German football in over 30 years, and was an embarrassment to the country as it prepared to host the 2006 FIFA World Cup.