On
the first of May 2015, the Spanish Government finally signed the Royal Decree
allowing the joint selling of the media rights of the Spanish top two football
leagues. The Minister for Sport stated that the Decree will allow clubs to “pay
their debts with the social security and the tax authorities and will enable
the Spanish teams to compete with the biggest European Leagues in terms of
revenues from the sale of media rights”.[1]Although
the signing of the Royal Decree was supposed to close a very long debate and
discussion between the relevant stakeholders, its aftermath shows that the Telenovela is not entirely over.
This
blog post will first provide the background story to the selling of media rights
in Spain. It will, thereafter, analyse the main points of the Royal Decree and outline
how the system will work in practice. Finally, the blog will shortly address
the current frictions between the Spanish League (LFP) and the Spanish football
federation (RFEF).More...
Editor's note: Ben Van Rompuy, Head of the ASSER International Sports Law Centre, was recently interviewed by LexisNexis UK for their in-house adviser service.
With kind permission from LexisNexis we reproduce the interview on our blog in
its entirety.
How does competition law affect the sports sector?
The application of EU competition law to the sports
sector is a fairly recent and still unfolding development. It was only in the
mid-1990s, due to the growing commercialization of professional sport, that
there emerged a need to address competition issues in relation to, for
instance, ticketing arrangements or the sale of media rights. More...
Introduction
On 1 April 2015, the new FIFA Regulations on
Working with Intermediaries (hereinafter referred as the Regulations) came into
force. These Regulations introduced a number of changes as regards the division
of competences between FIFA and its members, the national associations. A particularly
interesting issue from an EU competition law perspective is the amended Article 7 of the Regulations. Under paragraph 3, which regulates
the rules on payments to intermediaries (also previously referred to as ‘agents’), it is recommended that the
total amount of remuneration per transaction due to intermediaries either being
engaged to act on a player’s or club’s behalf should not exceed 3% of the
player’s basic gross income for the entire duration of the relevant employment
contract. In the case of transactions due to intermediaries who have been
engaged to act on a club’s behalf in order to conclude a transfer agreement, the
total amount of remuneration is recommended to not exceed 3% of the eventual
transfer fee paid in relation to the relevant transfer of the player.More...
INTRODUCTION
Almost a year after their announcement, the new
FIFA Regulations on
working with Intermediaries (“FIFA Regulations”) came into force on 1 April 2015. Their purpose is
to create a more simple and transparent system of regulation of football agents.
It should be noted, however, that the new FIFA rules enable every national football
association to regulate their own system on players’ intermediaries, provided
they respect the compulsory minimum requirements adopted. In an industry that
is already cutthroat, it thus remains to be seen whether FIFA’s “deregulation”
indeed creates transparency, or whether it is a Pandora’s Box to future regulatory
confusion.
This blog post will provide an overview of the
new FIFA Regulations on working with intermediaries and especially its minimum
requirements. Provided that
national associations are encouraged to “draw up regulations that shall incorporate
the principles established in these provisions”[1], three different national regulations
have been taken as case-studies: the English FA Regulations, the Spanish RFEF
Regulations and the Brazilian CBF Regulations. After mapping their main points of
convergence and principal differences, the issues that could arise from these regulatory
differences shall be analyzed. More...
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 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Editor’s note: Finally, the last blog of our
TPO ban Symposium has arrived! Due to unforeseen circumstances, FIFA had to
reconsider presenting its own views on the matter. However, FIFA advised us to
contact Prof. Dr. Christian
Duve to author the eagerly awaited blog on their behalf. Prof. Dr. Christian Duve is a lawyer
and partner with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and an honorary professor
at the University of Heidelberg. He has been a CAS arbitrator until 2014. Thus, as planned, we will conclude
this symposium with a post defending the compatibility of the TPO ban with EU
law. Many thanks to Prof. Dr. Duve for having accepted this last-minute
challenge! More...
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 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.
Editor's note: In this fourth part of our blog symposium on FIFA's TPO ban Daniel Geey shares his 'UK perspective' on the ban. The English Premier League being one of the first leagues to have outlawed TPO in 2010, Daniel will outline the regulatory steps taken to do so and critically assess them. Daniel is an associate in Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP's Competition and EU Regulatory Law Group. As well as being a famous 'football law' twitterer, he has also published numerous articles and blogs on the subject.
What is
Third Party Investment?
In brief
Third Party Investment (TPI) in the football industry, is where a football club
does not own, or is not entitled to, 100% of the future transfer value of a
player that is registered to play for that team. There are numerous models for
third party player agreements but the basic premise is that companies,
businesses and/or individuals provide football clubs or players with money in
return for owning a percentage of a player’s future transfer value. This
transfer value is also commonly referred to as a player’s economic rights.
There are instances where entities will act as speculators by purchasing a
percentage share in a player directly from a club in return for a lump sum that
the club can then use as it wishes. More...
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...