Europe’s highest judges have dealt UEFA a serious blow. It cannot be allowed to ban a Super League from the outset. The associations’ monopoly has thus come to an end. The Court of Justice accuses UEFA and FIFA of “abusing” their dominant market position.

Contrary to headlines about the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling against UEFA and FIFA, the court itself emphasized that its judgment does not imply approval of the Super League project.

“The Court has confirmed that this case was never about the Super League, but rather about the powers of UEFA and the extent of those powers,” said Miguel Poiares Maduro, professor of law at the European University Institute in Florence.

The Court ruled unequivocally that UEFA’s practices constitute an abuse of a dominant market position.

“It is a clear message from the Court that entities with regulatory or quasi-regulatory powers will be scrutinized under EU competition law – and very closely,” Pablo Ibáñez Colomo, Jean Monnet Chair in Competition and Regulation at the London School of Economics (LSE), told Forecasting.

According to Colomo, from now on this strict scrutiny will apply to any public authority, sports organization or even a group of companies that is in a position comparable to that of a regulatory authority.

“The message of the Court to sports federations was very clear: remember that you are an undertaking and subject to competition law,” said competition lawyer Viktoria Tsvetanova, an associate in Dentons’ competition team.

The ruling appears to restore the supremacy of competition rules and goes against the exceptions to antitrust law for European sports federations discussed in the December 2022 opinion in the case by ECJ Advocate General Athanasios Rantos.

Rantos noted that Article 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provides a special “constitutional recognition” for sport, referring to the Union’s obligation “to develop the European dimension in sport, by ensuring fairness and openness in competitions and cooperation between bodies responsible for sports”.

“Its interpretation was brutally and quite unequivocally rejected by the Court,” said Dr. Antoine Duval, senior researcher at the Asser Institute of International and European Law, adding that Article 165 was not mentioned once in the judgment.

What does the judgment mean in practice?
According to lawyer Tsvetanova, the ruling means, above all, that sports federations need to revise their rules, particularly with regard to the authorization of events, sanctions for players and clubs, arbitration provisions and their exclusive jurisdiction.
“There is a narrow reading that means that UEFA/FIFA will inevitably have to reconsider some of their practices in a certain sense,” said Professor Colomo, who pointed out that other sports federations are built on a monopolistic or quasi-monopolistic pyramid structure that sets the rules for everyone in those sports.

However, the European football governing body played down the impact of the ruling, stressing after the verdict that it was not an endorsement or validation of the Super League.

According to UEFA, the ruling highlights flaws in the association’s licensing system, which were already recognized and addressed in June 2022.

“UEFA is convinced of the robustness of its new rules, in particular that they are in line with all relevant European laws and regulations,“ the association said in a statement.

”I am concerned about this initial reaction, which underestimates the extent of the reforms they will have to implement to meet the requirements of the Court,” commented Maduro, himself a former FIFA official.

The Court has clearly recognized the importance of sport and of a model with a pyramid structure, with an organization at the top entrusted with regulatory and licensing powers, Maduro continued: “What the Court views very negatively is the way in which UEFA currently exercises its regulatory and licensing powers, as it leads to arbitrary discriminatory aspects.”

An open door
The other important consequence of the ruling is that it opens the door to any other organization that could produce alternative models, Maduro continued.

“If these alternative models prove to be better than UEFA, for example in the distribution of competition revenue, then UEFA cannot arbitrarily enforce its system,” he said.

Immediately after the verdict, Bernd Reichmann, managing director of sports development company A22, presented the broad outlines of a revised European Super League project.

“Today there is big news, and that is that football is free. Free from UEFA’s monopoly, free to pursue the best ideas without fear of sanctions,” he said. The main innovations of the new proposal for a European Super League are promotion and relegation and the possibility of broadcasting all matches for free.

However, several football clubs, including Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Atletico Madrid and AS Roma, publicly distanced themselves from the project today and stated that they would never join it.

Despite the skepticism surrounding the Super League, the ruling is a milestone in terms of the possibilities for establishing alternative competitions.

“I think that bargaining power has shifted to some extent,” said Colomo, who emphasized that the ruling could lead to a “natural inclination for some actors within the pyramid to challenge some of the rules”.

For Colomo, this will not be limited to football, but will be an invitation for many to challenge certain practices whenever they believe an organization in a position comparable to FIFA or a regulatory authority in general is violating their rights.