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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
'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
More...
Update: On 14 April footballleaks released a series of documents concerning Sporting de Gijón. Therefore, I have updated this blog on 19 April to take into account the new information provided.
Doyen Sports’ TPO (or TPI) model has been touted as a “viable alternative source of finance much needed by the large majority
of football clubs in Europe". These are the
words of Doyen’s CEO, Nélio Lucas, during a debate on (the prohibition of) TPO
held at the European Parliament in Brussels last January. During that same
debate, La Liga’s president, Javier
Tebas, contended that professional football clubs, as private undertakings,
should have the right to obtain funding by private investors to, among other
reasons, “pay off the club’s debts or to compete better”. Indeed, defendants
of the TPO model continuously argue that third party investors, such as Doyen, only
have the clubs’ best interests in mind, being the only ones capable and willing
to prevent professional football clubs from going bankrupt. This claim constitutes
an important argument for the defendants of the TPO model, such as La Liga and La Liga Portuguesa, who have jointly submitted a complaint in front of the
European Commission against FIFA’s ban of the practice.[1]
The eruption of footballleaks provided the essential material necessary to test this claim. It allows
us to better analyse and understand the functioning of third party investment and
the consequences for clubs who use these services. The leaked contracts between
Doyen and, for example, FC Twente, showed that the club’s short term financial
boost came at the expense of its long-term financial stability. If a club is
incapable of transferring players for at least the minimum price set in Doyen’s
contracts, it will find itself in a financially more precarious situation than
before signing the Economic Rights Participation Agreement (ERPA). TPO might
have made FC Twente more competitive in the short run, in the long run it
pushed the club (very) close to bankruptcy.
More than four months after its launch, footballleaks continues to publish documents from the football
world, most notably Doyen’s ERPAs involving Spanish clubs.More...
Editor’s note: This report
compiles all relevant news, events and materials on International and European
Sports Law based on the daily coverage provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser. You are invited to complete this survey via the comments section
below, feel free to add links to important cases, documents and articles we
might have overlooked.
Marine Montejo is a graduate from the College of
Europe in Bruges and is currently an Intern at the ASSER International Sports
Law Centre.
The Headlines
The Belgian Court of Appeal released its
judgment this month regarding Doyen’s legal battle against the FIFA TPO ban.
The Appeal Court confirmed the first instance decision and ruled out any provisional
measures to block the ban’s implementation (for an in depth review, see
our blog post). More importantly, the Court
reaffirmed that Swiss based sport federations are liable in front of EU Members’
States courts when EU competition law is involved. That means the next
important step for this legal battle is whether or not the European Commission
is going to open a formal proceeding (Doyen
already lodged a complaint) to assess the compatibility,
and more importantly, the proportionality of the TPO ban with EU law. Only a
preliminary ruling by the CJEU could hasten the decision if one of the European
national courts, hearing a case brought by Doyen (France or Belgium), decided
to refer a preliminary question.More...
Since
last year, Doyen Sports, represented by Jean-Louis Dupont, embarked on a legal
crusade against FIFA’s TPO ban. It has lodged a competition law complaint with
the EU Commission and started court proceedings in France and Belgium. In a first
decision on Doyen’s request for provisory measures, the Brussels Court of First
Instance rejected the demands raised by Doyen and already refused to send a
preliminary reference to the CJEU. Doyen, supported by the Belgium club Seraing,
decided to appeal this decision to the Brussels Appeal Court, which rendered
its final ruling on the question on 10 March 2016.[1] The
decision (on file with us) is rather unspectacular and in line with the first
instance judgment. This blog post will rehash the three interesting aspects of
the case.
·
The jurisdiction of the Belgian courts
·
The admissibility of Doyen’s action
·
The conditions for awarding provisory measures More...