Asser International Sports Law Blog

Our International Sports Law Diary
The Asser International Sports Law Centre is part of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut

Blog Symposium: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football. By Ariel N. Reck

Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 1: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it.
Day 2: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.

Editor’s note: Ariel N. Reck is an Argentine lawyer specialized in the football industry. He is a guest professor at ISDE’s Global Executive Master in International Sports Law, at the FIFA CIES Sports law & Management course (Universidad Católica Argentina) and the Universidad Austral Sports Law diploma (Argentina) among other prestigious courses. He is a regular conference speaker and author in the field of sports law.

Being an Argentine lawyer, Ariel will focus on the impact FIFA’s TPO ban will have (and is already having) on South American football.More...





Blog Symposium: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions - By Dr. Raffaele Poli (Head of CIES Football Observatory)

Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 1: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it.
Day 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.

Editor’s note: Raffaele Poli is a human geographer. Since 2002, he has studied the labour and transfer markets of football players. Within the context of his PhD thesis on the transfer networks of African footballers, he set up the CIES Football Observatory based at the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) located in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Since 2005, this research group develops original research in the area of football from a multidisciplinary perspective combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Raffaele was also involved in a recent study on TPO providing FIFA with more background information on its functioning and regulation (the executive summary is available here).

This is the third blog of our Symposium on FIFA’s TPO ban, it is meant to provide an interdisciplinary view on the question. Therefore, it will venture beyond the purely legal aspects of the ban to introduce its social, political and economical context and the related challenges it faces. More...






Blog Symposium: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it. The point of view of La Liga.

Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 2: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions
Day 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.

Editor's note: This is the first blog of our symposium on FIFA's TPO ban, it features the position of La Liga regarding the ban and especially highlights some alternative regulatory measures it would favour. La Liga has launched a complaint in front of the European Commission challenging the compatibility of the ban with EU law, its ability to show that realistic less restrictive alternatives were available is key to winning this challenge. We wish to thank La Liga for sharing its legal (and political) analysis of FIFA's TPO ban with us.

INTRODUCTION

The Spanish Football League (La Liga) has argued for months that the funding of clubs through the conveyance of part of players' economic rights (TPO) is a useful practice for clubs. However, it also recognized that the practice must be strictly regulated. In July 2014, it approved a provisional regulation that was sent to many of the relevant stakeholders, including FIFA’s Legal Affairs Department. More...






Blog Symposium: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law - Introduction - Antoine Duval & Oskar van Maren

Day 1: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it.
Day 2: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions
Day 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.

On 22 December 2014, FIFA officially introduced an amendment to its Regulations on the Status and Transfers of Players banning third-party ownership of players’ economic rights (TPO) in football. This decision to put a definitive end to the use of TPO in football is controversial, especially in countries where TPO is a mainstream financing mechanism for clubs, and has led the Portuguese and Spanish football leagues to launch a complaint in front of the European Commission, asking it to find the FIFA ban contrary to EU competition law.

Next week, we will feature a Blog Symposium discussing the FIFA TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law. We are proud and honoured to welcome contributions from both the complainant (the Spanish football league, La Liga) and the defendant (FIFA) and three renowned experts on TPO matters: Daniel Geey ( Competition lawyer at Fieldfisher, aka @FootballLaw), Ariel Reck (lawyer at Reck Sports law in Argentina, aka @arielreck) and Raffaele Poli (Social scientist and head of the CIES Football Observatory). The contributions will focus on different aspects of the functioning of TPO and on the impact and consequences of the ban. More...





The CAS and Mutu - Episode 4 - Interpreting the FIFA Transfer Regulations with a little help from EU Law

On 21 January 2015, the Court of arbitration for sport (CAS) rendered its award in the latest avatar of the Mutu case, aka THE sports law case that keeps on giving (this decision might still be appealed to the Swiss Federal tribunal and a complaint by Mutu is still pending in front of the European Court of Human Right). The decision was finally published on the CAS website on Tuesday. Basically, the core question focuses on the interpretation of Article 14. 3 of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players in its 2001 version. More precisely, whether, in case of a dismissal of a player (Mutu) due to a breach of the contract without just cause by the player, the new club (Juventus and/or Livorno) bears the duty to pay the compensation due by the player to his former club (Chelsea). Despite winning maybe the most high profile case in the history of the CAS, Chelsea has been desperately hunting for its money since the rendering of the award (as far as the US), but it is a daunting task. Thus, the English football club had the idea to turn against Mutu’s first employers after his dismissal in 2005, Juventus and Livorno, with success in front of the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC), but as we will see the CAS decided otherwise[1]. More...

The UCI Report: The new dawn of professional cycling?

The world of professional cycling and doping have been closely intertwined for many years. Cycling’s International governing Body, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), is currently trying to clean up the image of the sport and strengthen its credibility. In order to achieve this goal, in January 2014 the UCI established the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) “to conduct a wide ranging independent investigation into the causes of the pattern of doping that developed within cycling and allegations which implicate the UCI and other governing bodies and officials over ineffective investigation of such doping practices.”[1] The final report was submitted to the UCI President on 26 February 2015 and published on the UCI website on 9 March 2015. The report outlines the history of the relationship between cycling and doping throughout the years. Furthermore, it scrutinizes the role of the UCI during the years in which doping usage was at its maximum and addresses the allegations made against the UCI, including allegations of corruption, bad governance, as well as failure to apply or enforce its own anti-doping rules. Finally, the report turns to the state of doping in cycling today, before listing some of the key practical recommendations.[2]

Since the day of publication, articles and commentaries (here and here) on the report have been burgeoning and many of the stakeholders have expressed their views (here and here). However, given the fact that the report is over 200 pages long, commentators could only focus on a limited number of aspects of the report, or only take into account the position of a few stakeholders. In the following two blogs we will try to give a comprehensive overview of the report in a synthetic fashion.

This first blogpost will focus on the relevant findings and recommendations of the report. In continuation, a second blogpost will address the reforms engaged by the UCI and other long and short term consequences the report could have on professional cycling. Will the recommendations lead to a different governing structure within the UCI, or will the report fundamentally change the way the UCI and other sport governing bodies deal with the doping problem? More...

Book Review - Camille Boillat & Raffaele Poli: Governance models across football associations and leagues (2014)

Camille Boillat & Raffaele Poli: Governance models across football associations and leagues (2014)

Vol. 4, Centre International d'Etude du Sport, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, softback, 114 pages, ISBN 2-940241-24-4, Price: €24




Source: http://www.cies.ch/en/cies/news/news/article/new-publication-in-the-collection-editions-cies-governance-models-across-football-associations-an/

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The aftermath of the Pechstein ruling: Can the Swiss Federal Tribunal save CAS arbitration? By Thalia Diathesopoulou

It took only days for the de facto immunity of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) awards from State court interference to collapse like a house of cards on the grounds of the public policy exception mandated under Article V(2)(b) of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards . On 15 January 2015, the Munich Court of Appeals signalled an unprecedented turn in the longstanding legal dispute between the German speed skater, Claudia Pechstein, and the International Skating Union (ISU). It refused to recognise a CAS arbitral award, confirming the validity of a doping ban, on the grounds that it violated a core principle of German cartel law which forms part of the German public policy. A few weeks before, namely on 30 December 2014, the Court of Appeal of Bremen held a CAS award, which ordered the German Club, SV Wilhelmshaven, to pay ‘training compensation’, unenforceable for non-compliance with mandatory European Union law and, thereby, for violation of German ordre public. More...

‘The reform of football': Yes, but how? By Marco van der Harst

'Can't fight corruption with con tricks
They use the law to commit crime
And I dread, dread to think what the future will bring
When we're living in gangster time'
The Specials - Gangsters


The pressing need for change 

The Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) of the Council of Europe (CoE), which is composed of 318 MPs chosen from the national parliaments of the 47 CoE member states, unanimously adopted a report entitled ‘the reform of football’ on January 27, 2015. A draft resolution on the report will be debated during the PACE April 2015 session and, interestingly, (only?) FIFA’s president Sepp Blatter has been sent an invitation

The PACE report highlights the pressing need of reforming the governance of football by FIFA and UEFA respectively. Accordingly, the report contains some interesting recommendations to improve FIFA’s (e.g., Qatargate[1]) and UEFA’s governance (e.g., gender representation). Unfortunately, it remains unclear how the report’s recommendations will actually be implemented and enforced. 

The report is a welcomed secondary effect of the recent Qatargate directly involving former FIFA officials such as Jack Warner, Chuck Blazer, and Mohamed Bin Hammam[2] and highlighting the dramatic failures of FIFA’s governance in putting its house in order. Thus, it is undeniably time to correct the governance of football by FIFA and its confederate member UEFA – nolens volens. The real question is how to do it.



            Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images                   Photograph: Octav Ganea/AP

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SV Wilhelmshaven: a Rebel with a cause! Challenging the compatibility of FIFA’s training compensation system with EU law

Due to the legitimate excitement over the recent Pechstein ruling, many have overlooked a previous German decision rendered in the Wilhelmshaven SV case (the German press did report on the decision here and here). The few academic commentaries (see here and here) focused on the fact that the German Court had not recognized the res judicata effect of a CAS award. Thus, it placed Germany at the spearhead of a mounting rebellion against the legitimacy of the CAS and the validity of its awards. None of the commentators weighed in on the substance of the decision, however. Contrary to the Court in Pechstein, the judges decided to evaluate the compatibility of the FIFA rules on training compensations with the EU free movement rights. To properly report on the decision and assess the threat it may constitute for the FIFA training compensation system, we will first summarize the facts of the case (I), briefly explicate the mode of functioning of the FIFA training compensation system (II), and finally reconstruct the reasoning of the Court on the compatibility of the FIFA rules with EU law (III).More...

Asser International Sports Law Blog | Unpacking Doyen’s TPO Deals – Sporting Lisbon’s rebellion in the Rojo case. By Antoine Duval and Oskar van Maren

Asser International Sports Law Blog

Our International Sports Law Diary
The Asser International Sports Law Centre is part of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut

Unpacking Doyen’s TPO Deals – Sporting Lisbon’s rebellion in the Rojo case. By Antoine Duval and Oskar van Maren

In this blog we continue unpacking Doyen’s TPO deals based on the documents obtained via footballleaks. This time we focus on the battle between Doyen and Sporting over the Rojo case, which raises different legal issues as the FC Twente deals dealt with in our first blog.

 

I.              The context: The free-fall of Sporting

Sporting Lisbon, or Sporting Club de Portugal as the club is officially known, is a Portuguese club active in 44 different sports. Although the club has the legal status of Sociedade Anónima Desportiva, a specific form of public limited company, it also has over 130.000 club members, making it one of the biggest sports clubs in the world.

The professional football branch of Sporting is by far the most important and famous part of the club, and with its 19 league titles in total, it is a proud member of the big three cartel, with FC Porto and Benfica, dominating Portuguese football. Yet, it has not won a league title since 2002.

The members of Sporting get to elect the club’s president. A typical election campaign is akin to a political one with regard to status, media coverage and campaign funds. In fact, former Sporting president Pedro Santana Lopes went on to become the Prime Minister of Portugal in 2004-2005. In 2011, the elections were hotly disputed with Godinho Lopes defeating his main rival Bruno de Carvalho by only 300 votes. A request by De Carvalho to recount the votes was later dismissed, causing local unrests and police intervention.

Under Godinho Lopes’ presidency, Sporting obtained very poor sporting results, including a seventh place in the 2012/13 season, the worst ranking in the club’s history. New elections were held in 2013 and won by Bruno de Carvalho in a landslide. In addition to underwhelming results on the field, it turned out that the financial health of the club off the field was also at risk. Bruno de Carvalho faced a loss of €43 million in the 2012/13 season alone. This large financial debt was one of the reasons why on 1 October 2014, the General Assembly approved the proposal by the new Board of Directors to press liability charges against Godinho Lopes for breaching due diligence duties.

In the midst of the financial and managerial chaos surrounding Sporting, one dispute stands out as being relevant to our series of blogs on Doyen’s TPO deals. Faced with financial difficulties, Godinho Lopes had recourse to Doyen Sport to finance the recruitment of a number of players, amongst them Marco Rojo, an Argentine defender coming from Spartak Moscow in 2012. After two years at the club, the player was transferred against a healthy €20 million fee to Manchester United in 2014. However, the club staunchly refused to pay out the share of the economic rights owned by Doyen. Thus, giving way to a legal dispute on which we will put the spotlight in this blog. Although the case is still pending in front of CAS, several documents related to it were published on the footballleaks website.[1]

 

II.            The facts: the Rojo case

Before analysing the fine prints of the Economic Rights Participation Agreement (ERPA) between Doyen and Sporting concerning the economic rights of Rojo, a bit of background on the player and his career is needed. Marcos Rojo is an Argentine professional football player who appeared on the elite football scene at a young age. In 2009, by the age of 19, he won the Copa Libertadores with his side Estudiantes de la Plata, and in 2011, aged 21, he was a regular starter for the Argentinian national team during the Copa America. Sporting, under Godinho’s presidency, signed Rojo from Spartak Moscow for €5.43 million in July 2012.[2] In order to finance the signing of Rojo, Sporting needed fresh money, thus it turned to Doyen as a “last resort initiative”.[3] As provided by the ERPA, the Maltese investment company paid € 3 million and obtained in return 75% of Rojo’s Economic rights. The agreement includes similar provisions to the ones outlined in detail in our FC Twente blog. Notably, in the case Sporting would receive a transfer offer for Rojo of more than €8 million, Doyen could request that the club accept the offer or pay an amount equivalent to 75% of the offer to buy back the rights of the player from the fund. Moreover, in the case the club was to renew the contract of the player or failed to avoid that his contract runs out, it was bound to pay a minimum fee of €4.2 million (in case of renewal, Doyen could also chose to keep its share of the player’s economic rights).

Rojo’s outstanding 2014 World Cup (he was selected for the World Cup All-Star Team) triggered interest from English Premier League clubs, most notably Southampton and Manchester United. Both sides were keen on signing him in the summer of 2014, but Sporting president De Carvalho had no intention of selling him. According to De Carvalho, Rojo was key to the club’s ambition of becoming Portuguese champion. Sporting claimed that Doyen, via its director Nelio Lucas, was “promoting and forcing this transfer” and, thus, “violating his duty to respect Sporting’s independence in transfer related matters”.[4] De Carvalho maintained that Doyen’s influence breached then art.18bis of the FIFA RSTP. In retaliation against Doyen’s perceived influence, Sporting refused to pay to Doyen the agreed 75% share of the proceeds from the transfer of Rojo to Manchester United. Instead, it argued that Doyen had breached its contractual duties and declared the ERPA (and the guarantees attached to it) null and void. Nonetheless, the club did transfer back to Doyen the €3 million it invested at the outset. Hence, Sporting put Doyen’s contractual edifice to the test and Doyen was forced to go to court (and more precisely to the Court of Arbitration for Sport) to try to enforce its rights under the ERPA agreement.

 

III.         The showdown: The CAS as ultimate arbiter of the legality of Doyen’s TPO contracts

The ERPA signed by Doyen and Sporting contains both a clause defining Swiss law as the law applicable to the contract and the CAS as the jurisdiction competent to deal with disputes arising out of the contract.[5] Henceforth, it was mandatory for Doyen to turn to the CAS as soon as it became obvious that it would not recoup the 75% it believes it was owed on Rojo’s transfer. The dispute was finally heard by a CAS panel in June of this year and the final decision is still, as far as we know, pending (see the outstanding coverage of the issue by Tariq Panja from Bloomberg, here and here). The case is of great importance to Doyen, if the CAS finds that Doyen’s ERPA is contrary to Swiss law, this finding will most likely apply to each of Doyen’s TPO deals that are based on a similar model and dramatically weaken its contractual position. The good news for Doyen is that it probably has only relatively few ERPA’s still in place (for example FC Twente and Doyen agreed to put an end to their agreement), as the FIFA ban should have blocked it from entering into new agreements.

This case is not about former article 18bis of the FIFA RSTP, as is often misunderstood. This would come only into play if FIFA were to sanction Sporting for having had recourse to an ERPA with Doyen, an issue that might still arise and a configuration potentially already at play in the FC Twente case. The Rojo dispute between Sporting and Doyen, however, is of a purely contractual nature. It is only about whether Doyen’s TPO deals are compatible with Swiss civil law. In this regard, footballleaks has recently published a very interesting document: a confidential report by a Swiss law firm on the legality of Doyen’s Model ERPA in light of Swiss law. This report raises a number of thorny legal issues that the CAS will have to weigh on.

The ERPA between Doyen and Sporting must abide by the requirements of Swiss civil law. In general, the Swiss Civil Code is favourable to contractual autonomy, yet there are some restrictions to the freedom of the parties. To be valid, an agreement should not be contrary to the bonos mores. In other words, the moral values or ethical principles supported by the Swiss legal system. Indeed, as foreseen by Art. 20.1 of the Swiss Code of Obligations, a “contract is void if its terms are impossible, unlawful or immoral”.

The whole Rojo case in front of the CAS is likely to hang on the determination whether Doyen’s ERPA model is immoral or not from the Swiss perspective. Immorality is constituted especially if the contract introduces a serious imbalance between the obligations of the parties. The Swiss law firm mandated by Doyen doubted the signature of an ERPA would create such imbalance, simply because “both the FUND [Doyen] and the Club have rights and obligations according to the Agreement”.[6] This falls a bit short. As we have seen, Doyen uses the leverage offered by the financial difficulties of clubs (FC Twente or Sporting) to impose very harsh contractual conditions and high interest rates. This harshness is clearly acknowledged in the ERPA. For example, clause 10.6 indicates that Sporting “is conscious of the harshness and the severity of the consequences of clauses 10.4 and 10.5”. Whether the embedded contractual imbalance in the ERPA is sufficient to be deemed immoral under Swiss law is for the CAS to decide, but it is not a possibility that should be discarded lightly. Moreover, this potential immorality is also supported by the willingness of FIFA to ban TPO as it points at the conflicts of interest and integrity risks arising out of its use.

The ERPA could also be contrary to art. 27.2 of the Swiss Civil Code, which provides that: “No person may surrender his or her freedom or restrict the use of it to a degree which violates the law or public morals”. According to the Swiss law firm contracted by Doyen, this is especially the case if a legal entity’s “economic freedom is restricted in such a way that its economic existence is in danger”.[7] It also argued that, “the undertakings of the Club cannot in principle be considered excessive”, as “there is no obvious disparity between the considerations of the Parties”.[8] Here again, the arguments provided by Doyen’s law firm are feeble at best. In fact, the contractual imbalance is openly acknowledged in Doyen’s own contract. The economic freedom of Sporting (or FC Twente for that matter) is so drastically reduced that a club is forced into selling its best players at Doyen’s will.[9] Those players are at the heart of the “economic existence” of a club. In fact, the fate of FC Twente illustrates how the loss of its best players led to the club facing financial and sporting bankruptcy.

Finally, Sporting is also likely to have argued that Doyen was in breach of its contractual duties. Clause 14 of the ERPA stipulates that Doyen “recognizes that the Club is an independent entity in so far as the Club’s employment and transfer-related matters are concerned and [Doyen] shall not, either though this Agreement or otherwise, seek to exert influence over these matters […]”. The Club claimed in its termination letter of the ERPA that “Doyen has seriously and irremediably violated its obligations of non-influence in Sporting transfer policy […] which constitutes a material breach of the agreement”. Swiss contract law may entail the right for Sporting to refuse to execute its part of the deal in case of breach of contract by Doyen. In that regard, Sporting would have had to factually demonstrate the faulty character of Doyen’s intervention in Rojo’s transfer.

It is certainly not a given that the CAS will consider Doyen’s ERPA contrary to Swiss law or for Doyen to be in breach of its contractual duties, but there are credible legal arguments that point in both directions. Surely, the hubris of the management of Sporting and FC Twente is chiefly responsible for the terrible deals closed with Doyen. Yet, Doyen leveraged their dire financial situations and irrational ambitions to strong-arm them into one-sided agreements that are imposing unfair terms on the clubs. Doyen takes on very little risk: If a player fails to become a star, the fund will recoup its investment plus very reasonable interests (unless the club is bankrupt); if a player breaks through, it will pocket the jackpot. The fund is a true vulture fund geared to the football industry. It buys under-priced assets (economic rights attached to players) in fire sales and hopes for a huge profit.

We will hear soon from the CAS whether it deems this practice legal under Swiss law. In any event, FIFA has decided to ban TPO outright, raising the opposite question of the compatibility of the ban with EU law. This will be the subject of our final blog.

 


[1] The documents used, especially the ERPA applicable to Rojo and the termination letter send out by Sporting, might be blocked or unavailable due to complaints lodged by Doyen. They are on file with the authors.

[2] http://www.transfermarkt.nl/marcos-rojo/profil/spieler/93176.

[3] Rojo ERPA, 23 August 2012, p.2.

[4] Letter of termination of the ERPA, 14 August 2014, para.15. See also paras 17-20.

[5] Rojo ERPA, 23 August 2012, clause 22 and 23.

[6] FRORIEP, ‘Memorandum on certain questions of Swiss law in relation to a draft ERPA’, para.16.

[7] Ibid, para.23.

[8] Ibid, para.25.

[9] Doyen could not ignore the fact that those clubs were in such financial difficulties, that they would be unable to pay on their own the share of a transfer offer above the agreed amount and thus retain their player.

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