A number of Borussia Dortmund fan groups will not travel to support their team at RB Leipzig on Saturday and instead follow radio coverage of the match at the club's old ground the Rote Erde.
Leipzig host Dortmund this weekend in what will be their first ever home match in the Bundesliga.
The club, only founded in 2009 by Austrian soft drink company Red Bull, won promotion to the top flight last season and have been tipped by some as one of the teams to challenge Bayern Munich's dominance in Germany.
However, many supporters around the country have been highly critical of Leipzig, claiming the club have been set up by Red Bull purely as a marketing vehicle for its product. In contrast, Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkusen, the clubs owned by Volkswagen and Bayer respectively, were originally founded for their employees.
As a result, Dortmund supporters announced that several fan groups will not travel to Leipzig to see their team take on the hosts.
"The construct of the newly promoted side from Leipzig stands against everything that is football for us," they said.
Instead, BVB fans from all over Germany were invited to come to Dortmund and follow the club's reserve team play in the fourth tier and then listen to radio coverage of the Leipzig clash at the Rote Erde.
The protest was perceived as a call for a full boycott of the game in parts of the German media, with Sport Bild using the headline, "The new class war," for a piece on the relationship between the two clubs.
However, Leipzig's revamped and renamed Zentralstadion, once the biggest ground in Germany, sold out within a few hours and away tickets were sold within only 23 minutes.
"We could have sold more than double the amount of tickets," Leipzig sporting director Ralf Rangnick said.
"We don't boycott the match," Nicolai Maeurer, a spokesperson for fan group Profans Dortmund, told ESPN FC. "A broad mixture of fans decided they don't want to go there. With the successor club of SSV Makranstadt [Leipzig] a line was crossed and you don't have to follow that path if you don't want to."
Maeurer added that other fan groups are also currently discussing protests against Leipzig.
"But it's not a path we want to dictate," he said. "Many certainly follow what happens in Dortmund. And you hear the whispering in a few fan groups, but they have to decide what to do."
Earlier this week, fans of Red Bull-owned Austrian club FC Salzburg hit out at the drinks company for turning their team into a "laughing stock" after selling eight players to Leipzig in just over 12 months.