The European
Commission’s competition decisions in the area of sport, which set out broad
principles regarding the interface between sports-related activities and EU
competition law, are widely publicized. As a result of the decentralization of
EU competition law enforcement, however, enforcement activity has largely
shifted to the national level. Since 2004, national competition authorities
(NCAs) and national courts are empowered to fully apply the EU competition
rules on anti-competitive agreements (Article 101 TFEU) and abuse of a dominant
position (Article 102 TFEU).
Even though
NCAs and national courts have addressed a series of interesting competition
cases (notably dealing with the regulatory aspects of sport) during the last
ten years, the academic literature has largely overlooked these developments.
This is unfortunate since all stakeholders (sports organisations, clubs,
practitioners, etc.) increasingly need to learn from pressing issues arising in
national cases and enforcement decisions. In a series of blog posts we will
explore these unknown territories of the application of EU competition law to
sport.
In this second installment of this blog series, we discuss a recent
judgment of the regional court (Landgericht) of Dortmund finding that the
International Handball Federation (IHF)’s mandatory release system of players
for matches of national teams without compensation infringes EU and German
competition law.[1] More...
The European Commission’s competition decisions in the
area of sport, which set out broad principles regarding the interface between
sports-related activities and EU competition law, are widely publicized. As a
result of the decentralization of EU competition law enforcement, however,
enforcement activity has largely shifted to the national level. Since 2004,
national competition authorities (NCAs) and national courts are empowered to
fully apply the EU competition rules on anti-competitive agreements (Article
101 TFEU) and abuse of a dominant position (Article 102 TFEU).
Even though NCAs have addressed a series of
interesting competition cases (notably dealing with the regulatory aspects of
sport) during the last ten years, the academic literature has largely overlooked
these developments. This is unfortunate since all stakeholders (sports organisations,
clubs, practitioners, etc.) increasingly need to learn from pressing issues
arising in national cases and enforcement decisions. In a series of blog posts
we will explore these unknown territories of the application of EU competition
law to sport.More...