The football world has been buzzing with
Doyen’s name for a few years now. Yet, in practice very little is known about
the way Doyen Sports (the Doyen entity involved in the
football business) operates. The content of the contracts it signs with clubs
was speculative, as they are subjected to strict confidentiality policies.
Nonetheless, Doyen became a political (and public) scapegoat and is widely
perceived as exemplifying the ‘TPOisation’ of football. This mythical status of
Doyen is also entertained by the firm itself, which has multiplied the (until
now failed) legal actions against FIFA’s TPO ban (on the
ban see our blog symposium here) in a bid to attract attention and to publicly
defend its business model. In short, it has become the mysterious flag bearer
of TPO around the world. Thanks to a new anonymous group, inspired by the WikiLeaks
model, we can now better assess how Doyen Sports truly functions. Since 5 November
someone has been publishing different types of documents involving more or less
directly the work of Doyen in football. These documents are all freely
available at http://footballleaks.livejournal.com/. By doing so, the group has given
us (legal scholars not involved directly in the trade) the opportunity to
finally peruse the contractual structure of a TPO deal offered by Doyen and, as
we purport to show in the coming weeks, to embark upon a journey into Doyen’s
TPO-world.
The footballleaks group leaked two
types of documents: documents related to the internal structure of Doyen and
documents related to the various deals (involving mainly Portuguese and Spanish clubs and FC
Twente) signed by Doyen. Regarding Doyen Sports itself as a company, the
documents provide a good overview of its functioning and shareholder structure.
The company based in Malta was registered in May 2011 and is controlled by two
main shareholders, Refik Arif and Malik Ali. The aims of the company, based on
its Memorandum and Articles of Association (point 1.1), include:
1. Acquisition
and sale of representation rights of football players, coaches and managers and
representation of football players, coaches and managers in all aspects of
their football career, including associated off-field and commercial activities
(including, where necessary, through licensed agents);
2.
Acquisition
and sale of football players and/or the economical rights of football players;
3.
Making
an offer to the player for his player registration documentation, a part
thereof or some other offer to the player and/or football clubs;
4.
Transferring
football players, coaches and managers between different football clubs;
5.
Representing
football clubs;
6.
Having
a benefit or take an active role in the day-to-day running of football clubs,
subject to complying with the FIFA Regulations and other relevant national or
international regulations;
7.
Granting
loans to football clubs; and
8.
Carry
out such activities as may be ancillary to the above or as may be necessary or
desirable to achieve the above objects without territorial restriction anywhere
in the world.
Thus, Doyen’s business model blends
different types of activities: investment and loans to clubs (broadly speaking the
TPO side of Doyen’s activities) and the representation of players/coaches (the
agent side of Doyen’s activities). We will not investigate further the internal
structure of Doyen or its shareholders; such enquiries are better left to
investigative journalists.
We, for our part, are going to focus
on the contracts signed by Doyen with two clubs: FC Twente (Twente) and
Sporting Club Portugal (Sporting). This analytical and descriptive exercise
will feed into an evaluation of the compatibility of FIFA’s TPO ban with EU
law. While it is difficult to know who precisely is responsible for
footballleaks (maybe the ideal of transparency should also apply to the group),
one thing is sure: the group seems to have a keen interest in the activities of
Sporting (and Portuguese clubs in general). The emergence of this website
targeting in priority Doyen might be linked to the on-going dispute between Doyen and Sporting about the TPO
agreement signed over the transfer of the player Marcos Rojo. The dispute has
been heard in September by the CAS, which will render its award on the matter
in the coming month(s). In any case, the documents released until now by
footballleaks enable us to draw a detailed profile of the TPO deals struck by
Doyen with Twente and Sporting. The deal between Doyen and Twente, and its
legal ramifications, will be the subject of a first blog early next week. We
will map the network of obligations to which Twente accepted to be subjected in
return for Doyen’s capital injection in the club. The case stirred a public
controversy in the Netherlands and already led to the departure of Twente’s President. The second blog
will focus on Sporting and more precisely on the “Rojo” TPO-deal with Doyen and
its legal implications. Based on these empirical studies of the structure and
implementation of the TPO agreements struck by Doyen, we will revisit the crucial
pending question of the compatibility of FIFA’s TPO ban with EU competition
law.