Bayreuth during the month-long Richard Wagner Festival, commonly known as the Bayreuth Festival. The Festival draws thousands each year, and has persistently been sold out since its inauguration in 1876. Currently, waiting lists for tickets can stretch for 10 years or more. Owing to Wagner's relationship with the then unknown philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the first Bayreuth festival is cited as a key turning point in Nietzsche's philosophical development. Though at first an enthusiastic champion of Wagner's music, Nietzsche ultimately became hostile, viewing the festival and its revellers as symptom of cultural decay and bourgeois decadence —an event which led him to
Medi Bayreuth Basketball Bundesliga. In 1979, the basketball team separated from Post SV and the club was re-founded as USC Bayreuth. After the 1983–84 season the team relegated form the Bundesliga. Following this event, the club merged with TTBG Steiner-Optik Bayreuth, a former table tennis club, to form BG Steiner Bayreuth. As Steiner Bayreuth, the team had some great successes. The club immediately returned to the highest level and years later started to win several trophies in Germany. In 1988 and 1989 the team won the BBL-Pokal and in the 1988–89 season the team was crowned German national champions after winning the