Our first report on the FIFA business dealt with FIFA’s revenues and highlighted their impressive rise and progressive diversification. In parallel to this growth of FIFA’s income, it is quite natural that its expenses have been following a similar path (see Graph 1). However, as we will see FIFA makes it sometimes very difficult to identify precisely where the money is going. Nonetheless, this is precisely what we wish to tackle in this post, and to do so we will rely on the FIFA Financial reports over the last 10 years.

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After a decade of financial misery, it appears that Valencia CF’s problems are finally over. The foreign takeover by Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim will be concluded in the upcoming weeks, and the construction on the new stadium will resume after five years on hold due to a lack of money. On 3 June Bankia, the Spanish bank that “saved” Valencia CF in 2009 by providing a loan of €81 million, gave the green light for the takeover. However, appearances can be deceiving.More...

In April 2014, the Swedish Gambling Authority (Lotteriinspektionen) warned the organisers of the Stockholm Marathon that it would impose a fine of SEK 2 million (ca. € 221.000) for its sponsorship agreement with online betting operator Unibet. The Authority found that the sponsorship agreement violates §38 of the Swedish Lotteries Act, which prohibits the promotion of gambling services that are not authorized in Sweden.[1] The organisers, however, refused to withdraw Unibet as its sponsor and prominently displayed the Unibet logo at the event, which took place on 31 May 2014. As a result, the organisers of the Stockholm Marathon now face legal action before the Swedish administrative courts. More...

On next Thursday the 2014 World Cup will kick off in Sao Paulo. But next week will also see the FIFA members meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday at a much awaited FIFA congress. For this special occasion we decided to review FIFA’s financial reports over the last ten years. This post is the first of two, analysing the reports and highlighting the main economic trends at play at FIFA. First, we will study the revenue streams and their evolution along the 2003-2013 time span. In order to ensure an accurate comparison, we have adjusted the revenues to inflation, in order to provide a level playing field easing the comparative analysis over the years and types of revenues. Our first two graphs gather the main revenue streams into two comparative overviews. Graph 1 brings together the different types of revenues in absolute numbers, while Graph 2 lays down the share of each type of revenues for any given year (the others category covers a bundle of minor revenue streams not directly relevant to our analysis).

Graph 1: FIFA revenues in Millions of Dollars, 2003-2013 (adjusted for inflation). More...

This year the race for UEFA Europa League places in Serie A was thrilling. In the final minutes of the last game of the season, Alessio Cerci, Torino FC striker, had the opportunity to score a penalty that would have qualified his team to the 2014-2015 edition of the UEFA Europa League. However, he missed and Parma FC qualified instead. More...

Shortly after his election as IOC President, Thomas Bach announced his intention to initiate an introspective reflection and reform cycle dubbed (probably a reference to former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s publicly praised Agenda 2010) the Olympic Agenda 2020. The showdown of a year of intense brainstorming is to take place in the beginning of December 2014 during an IOC extraordinary session, in which fundamental reforms are expected. More...

Pursuant to Kelsen’s famous pyramid, the authority of norms may be ranked according to their sources: Constitution is above the Law, which is in turn superior to the Regulations, which themselves stand higher to the Collective Agreement etc…Under French labour law, this ranking can however be challenged by a “principle of favourable treatment” which allows a norm from a lower rank to validly derogate from a superior norm, if (and only if) this derogation benefits to the workers.

On 2 April 2014, the Cour de Cassation (the French Highest Civil Court) considered that these principles apply in all fields of labour law, regardless of the specificity of sport[1].  In this case, Mr. Orene Ai’i, a professional rugby player, had signed on 13 July  2007 an employment contract with the Rugby Club Toulonnais (RCT) for two sport seasons with effect on 1 July 2007. More...

Graph 1: Number of Cases submitted to CAS (CAS Satistics)

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Dahmane v KRC GENK

Court of Labour of Antwerp (Hasselt district) 6 May 2014

Chamber 2

Algemeen rolnummer 2009/AH/199

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Yesterday, the press revealed that the European Commission decided to reject the complaint filed by Jean-Louis Dupont, the former lawyer of Bosman, on behalf of a player agent Striani, against the UEFA Financial Fair Play (FFP) Regulations. The rejection as such is not a surprise. The Commission had repeatedly expressed support of the principles underlying the UEFA FFP. While these statements were drafted vaguely and with enough heavy caveats to protect the Commission from prejudicing a proper legal assessment, the withdrawal of its support would have been politically embarrassing.

Contrary to what is now widely assumed, this decision does not entail that UEFA FFP regulations are compatible with EU Competition Law. UEFA is clearly the big victor, but the legal reality is more complicated as it looks. More...