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. For this blog, our dataset will cover the two ERPAs between Doyen and Sporting de Gijón (found here and here); the ERPAs between Doyen and Sevilla FC for Kondogbia and Babá; the ERPAs between Doyen and Getafe for Abdelazziz Barreda and Pedro León; the ERPA between Doyen and Granada CF for Luís Martins; the ERPA between Doyen and Atlético Madrid for Josuha Guilavogui; and the ERPA between Doyen and Valencia CF for Dorlan Pabón.

The first part of this blog will provide background information on the recent economic history of Spanish football. The posterior in-depth analysis of the ERPAs will thus be placed in context. The blog will also include a table with the relevant facts from the ERPAs completed with the information included in an Excel document showing a map of deals and transactions allegedly conducted by Doyen and recently published on footballleaks. Relevant facts and figures that are not found in the ERPAs or in the Excel document, will be taken from the website www.transfermarkt.de. Based on the outcome of the analysis, we will attempt to conclude whether, and to what extent, the ERPAs have been profitable for the clubs involved, from a financial and competitive perspective.

Financial misery and TV rights inequality off the field

The financial misery

Spain was one of the countries most affected by the global financial crisis that commenced in 2008. The unemployment rate was above 25% for a long period of time and its budget deficit was about 10% from 2008 to 2012. The (professional) football sector also suffered from this general financial crisis. A study on the financial situation of Spanish clubs during the period 2007-2011 shows that by June 2011, 80% of La Liga clubs had a negative working capital. This meant that the clubs’ short term assets were not enough to cover the short term debts. The study further explains that the main reason for the financial difficulties is the excess of expenditures on players, i.e. paying transfer fees and salaries that clubs cannot afford. Not surprisingly, by 2011, half of the clubs from the Spanish first and second division had entered bankruptcy proceedings. A large part of the total debt was owed to the Spanish public authorities. In 2012, clubs in Spain's top two divisions collectively owed some €750 million to the tax authorities and another €600 million to the social security system. One of the teams who signed ERPAs with Doyen, Atlético Madrid, was known to have a tax debt which accounted for a fifth of the entire league’s tax debt. In fact, their tax debt of over €120 million amounted to over 60% of their annual revenue. Almost 40% of the clubs in the top two divisions presented negative equity, meaning that they were in clear need for funds from other parties. The general economic crisis prevented clubs to get these funds through normal means, like shareholders, members, sponsorships and bank loans. Local authorities were many times willing to aid their clubs. For example, the municipality of Gijón had rescued Sporting de Gijón by relocating its youth training facilities and subsequently buying the facilities for €12 million. Another example is that of Valencia CF. In its ambition to grow, the club decided to build a new stadium. The idea was to finance the new stadium by selling the old stadium. Once again, due to the financial crisis, and particularly the collapse of the housing market, it suddenly was incapable of selling the old stadium for the required price. The construction on the new stadium had already commenced with loaned money which could not be paid back. The municipality’s decision to place a State guarantee on this loan has been the subject of a formal State aid investigation by the European Commission.

TV Rights income inequality

One of the most important ways to generate income for professional football clubs is through the selling of TV rights. The Spanish clubs combined generated roughly €700 million per year from the selling of TV rights between 2010 and 2015.[2] This is slightly more than the €628 million the German Bundesliga was making per year between 2013 and 2016, but less than €940 million the Italian league was making in the 2012-13 season. The English Premier League is in a league of its own in this regard, which is making about €1.2 billion per year from the 2013-14 season onwards.[3]

Notwithstanding the total €700 million a year, most Spanish clubs do not derive enough money from selling the TV rights to compensate their losses. One has to keep in mind that where the clubs of Europe’s other major football leagues (e.g. England, Germany, France and Italy) were selling their TV rights jointly, Spanish clubs were still selling their TV rights individually. By means of the individual selling system, Spain’s two most popular clubs, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, were capable of selling their TV rights for much more money than the other clubs. In the 2010/11 season for example, out of the €641 million generated in total, FC Barcelona got €163 million, whereas Real Madrid got €156 million. The remaining 16 clubs of La Liga had to share the remaining €322 million, which is slightly more than €20 million per club on average. By contrast, the ‘smaller clubs’ of the English Premier League were still making at least €49 million in that same season, which is two-and-a-half times as much as their Spanish counterparts.[4] Even the club that was earning least money in Italy in 2012, Pescara, was earning more per year from the selling of TV rights than the average Spanish club (€25 million).

Calls for a fairer distribution of TV rights income in Spain have been heard for years, particularly from the smaller clubs, but the switch to a joint selling system will only take place as of the start of the 2016-17 season. It is believed that continuous lobbying by Real Madrid and FC Barcelona against the joint selling system is the main reason for this delay. In a way, it could be argued that apart from reckless risks on the transfer market and the effects of the Spanish financial crisis, the dominant position of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona is what led to many Spanish clubs being in severe financial difficulties. The urge of these clubs to turn to investment companies like Doyen becomes more understandable, given that the system itself did not allow them from obtaining funds from other ‘normal’ sources.    

The ERPA’s and its aftermaths explained

On the day of writing this blog (12 April 2016), nine ERPAs between Doyen and Spanish football clubs were published on the website of footballleaks. The ERPAs are divided in two groups: Firstly, the ERPAs that proved to be successful for both the club and Doyen are analysed; the second part combines all the ERPAs in which the players concerned were either not sold for high enough profit, or not transferred at all. As will be shown, these ERPAs had mostly negative financial consequences for the clubs.

The successful ERPAS: Kondogbia and Barrada

Sevilla’s recent sporting successes, most notably winning the Europa League four times since 2006, are said to have been the result of a high level youth academy combined with an excellent scouting network. However, it has never been a secret that Sevilla made use of the services provided by Doyen, including the signing of ERPAs. In a well-publicised seminar on TPO that took place in April 2015, Sevilla defended the TPO model and made clear that it was against an outright ban of the practice. The ERPA concerning Geoffrey Kondogbia and his subsequent transfer to AS Monaco can explain why Sevilla is in favour of the TPO model. Kondogbia was transferred from RC Lens to Sevilla on the same date as the signing of the ERPA (26 July 2012) for €3 million. With the objective of obtaining 100% of the Economic rights, Doyen paid RC Lens the full amount of the transfer fee. In turn, Sevilla would buy from Doyen 50% of the economic rights for €1.65 million. Even though the minimum transfer fee was set by the parties at €6 million, Kondogbia was sold only one year later to AS Monaco for a staggering €20 million. An excellent deal for Doyen, which registered a profit of €7.89 million.[5] This ERPA is an example of a collaboration between a club and an investment fund, which has been highly profitable for both. With the “help” of Doyen, Sevilla managed to sign a young player and sell him for a profit not long after. However, as can be seen below, even Sevilla has signed ERPAs that have not been very beneficial for the club.

A second “successful ERPA” signed between Doyen and a Spanish club was the ERPA between Doyen and Getafe for Barrada. Similar to many other ERPAs, it stipulated that Getafe was not able to obtain financial support from the banking system due “to the current financial crisis”. Therefore, Getafe decided to sell 60% of the economic rights of one of its most promising young players for €1.5 million to Doyen. Both parties agreed that the minimum transfer value of Barrada was €5 million. Consequently, as can be deducted under paragraph 7 of the ERPA, Doyen’s minimum return would always be at least €3 million (60% of €5 million), guaranteeing Doyen a profit of €1.5 million (€3 million minimum return minus €1.5 million grant fee). The minimum return was easily surpassed after Barrada was transferred to Al-Jazira for €8.5 million in 2013. In accordance with Doyen’s own figures, the investment fund obtained €3.35 million for this transfer, a profit of 223%.[6]

The many “failed” ERPAs

Atlético Madrid was no novice to the practice of TPO when it sold 50% of Joshua Guivalogui’s economic rights for €5 million to Doyen. As can be seen from the ‘Map of Deals’, Atlético had previously sold 33% of the economic rights of the highly successful Atlético player, Falcao, to Doyen for €10 million. His later transfer to AS Monaco for €43 million was probably also economically beneficial for Atlético. Guivalogui, however, has been less successful wearing an Atlético shirt. He has played seven games in total for the club in two-and-a-half years, having been loaned to St-Étienne for the 2013-14 season, and to VfL Wolfsburg for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons. If Wolfsburg decides to lift the option it has to buy Guivalogui for €4 million[7], Atlético Madrid will probably need to pay an additional amount to Doyen in order to reach the agreed minimum fee of €6.5 million.[8]

As regards Sevilla FC, where the ERPA concerning Kondogbia can be seen as “successful”, Babá’s ERPA tells a completely different story. Sevilla sold 20% of Babá’s economic rights for €660.000 to Doyen in 2012. Nonetheless, Babá never managed to secure a spot in the Sevilla squad and he was loaned out to Getafe and Levante between 2013 and 2015. After his contract expired with Sevilla in the summer of 2015, he moved back to his former club Marítimo as a free agent. Although Sevilla did not receive a fee for this transfer, Doyen still obtained a guaranteed profit of €148.000, as can be seen from the ‘map of deals’.

The Guivalogui ERPA and the Babá ERPA tell a similar story. Both players did not fulfil the expectations the clubs had of them at the moment Doyen bought parts of their economic rights. As a result, they were transferred, or are going to be transferred, for an amount well below the agreed minimum return. A similar run of events occurred with Luís Martins and Dorlan Pabon. Both players were not successful at Granada and Valencia respectively, and were transferred at a loss for the club. The exact figures of the transfers can be found in the table below.

The ERPA’s signed between Doyen and Sporting de Gijón are particularly interesting in terms of “failure”, because they illustrate perfectly the desperate situation the club found itself in. Sporting has been on the verge of disappearing not once, but several times in the last 10 to 15 years. In 2005, its total debt amounted to €51 million, with more than half owed to the public authorities. As a result, the club entered bankruptcy proceedings. In 2007, a settlement was reached between the club and its creditors. Even though the club still had a debt of €35.8 million, a Spanish court decided to terminate the bankruptcy proceedings. By the second half of 2011, the club presented a positive balance sheet at the shareholders’ general assembly for a fifth year in a row, but in reality Sporting was still acute financial difficulties, as the club would admit later on. It is this acute need for money that made the club turned to Doyen twice in less than a year. The fact that Sporting de Gijón is still alive today (albeit in danger of relegating to the second division), makes one wonder whether the ERPA with Doyen actually aided the club in its fight for survival or whether it worsened the situation in a similar way as FC Twente’s.

The first agreement concerns the purchase for €2 million of part of the economic rights of nine players who, at the time of signing, were registered as Sporting players.[9] Future transfers of one or more of these players would need to generate a profit of €7 million for Doyen.[10] The lifespan of the first agreement was not very long, as it was replaced by a second ERPA on 22 March 2012. Indeed, Sporting de Gijón stated officially on 23 February 2016 that the first ERPA never deployed any legal effects.

The first ERPA and the second ERPA between Doyen and Sporting show some clear similarities. For an amount of €2 million, Doyen buys 25% of the economic rights of all the players of both the first team and Sporting B (the second team).[11] This percentage remains 25% until Doyen obtains an amount of €7 million from the transfers of Sporting players to other clubs. Once this amount is reached, the percentage will be reduced to 15% until a further €3 million is earned by Doyen. Therefore, the minimum return Doyen should get is that of €10 million. Should Doyen not have received €7 million or more by 31 January 2015, the percentage of the economic rights owned by Doyen of all the Sporting and Sporting B players will be increased to 35%. Doyen's share of the economic rights would also increase to 35% if the club relegates from the first division (clause 2.5). A further important element of the ERPA is clause 4.1, by which Sporting names Doyen as the exclusive agent (intermediary) of the club for all transfer and loan operations of Sporting players. 

By using the ‘map of deals’ and transfermarkt, we have listed all Sporting and Sporting B players sold after March 2012. These players were:

-          Davud Barral – sold for €2 million to Orduspor on 5 July 2012;

-          Alberto Botía – sold for €3 million to Sevilla FC on 11 August 2012;

-          Miguel de las Cuevas – sold for €1.2 million to CA Osasuna on 1 July 2013;

-          Óscar Guido Trejo – sold for €2.7 million to FC Toulouse on 19 July 2013;

-          Borja López - sold for €2.2 million to AS Monaco on 2 August 2013;

-          Stefan Scepovic - sold for €2.56 million to Celtic FC on 1 September 2014.

A closer look at the ‘map of deals’ shows one important discrepancy compared to the ERPA of 22 March 2012. The share of economic rights owned by Doyen were not 25% (as stipulated in the ERPA), but 45%. Thanks to footballleaks' release of the so-called 'Escritura de Liquidación' on 14 April we now know what caused this increase. Firstly, in accordance with clause 2.5 of the ERPA, the economic rights owned by Doyen of all the Sporting players (except Botía and De las Cuevas) increased to 35%, since Sporting relegated to the second division in May 2012. Secondly, being an intermediary in all of these transfers, Doyen was entitled to an additional 10% of all the income generated from the transfers.[12] The ‘map of deals’ shows that the transfers of Sporting players has so far led to Doyen receiving more than €3.5 million, a profit of about €1.5 million for their €2 million investment. Nonetheless, this figure is still well short of the minimum return Doyen expects to get of €10 million. In other words, should the ERPA still be in force, Sporting is still required to sell more players if it is to meet its obligations towards Doyen.

Table summarizing the analysed ERPA’s signed between Doyen and Spanish clubs

Conclusion

The reason that many Spanish clubs decided to sell economic rights of players to companies like Doyen from about 2011 to 2015 (the year FIFA banned the practice) is relatively straightforward: The financial crisis was heavily felt in Spanish football, with many clubs incapable of paying off high debts owed to the public authorities. Moreover, the difference between the financial and competitive power of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona on the one hand, and all the other clubs on the other was only getting bigger. Not only did competing at national level become close to impossible, even smaller clubs from England were generating more than twice the revenues of Spanish clubs. The chances of being successful at European level were at risk.

Doyen was basically at the right place, at the right time. The ‘small’ Spanish clubs were in desperate need for money, either to compete or simply to survive, and Doyen was willing to give them this money in return for (part of) the economic rights of their football players. From the outside, it looks like a perfect match between club and investment fund. However, was TPO profitable for Spanish football clubs from a competitive and financial perspective?

From a financial perspective, the business is clearly lucrative for Doyen. As can be seen in the table, by investing €19.335 million it so far made a profit of €15.757 million.[13] In other words, an 81.5% profit! The same cannot be said for the clubs. Only the transfers of Barrada from Getafe to Al-Jazira and Kondogbia from Sevilla to AS Monaco were profitable. For all the other ERPAs, it appears that an a posteriori compensation to Doyen was necessary, because the amount obtained through the transfer could not cover the minimum return secured to Doyen in the ERPAs.

The legal discussions on TPO to a large extent focused on whether the practice leads to an unauthorized influence of third parties on the internal governance and policies of a club; and on whether a complete ban is contrary to (EU) competition law. Yet, the aspect that remains underexposed in the author’s opinion is the severe negative financial effect TPO can have on a football club. As we have discussed a couple of months ago in a blog on FC Twente, the financial position of the Dutch club deteriorated after signing the ERPA to such an extent that the club is now in serious danger of disappearing all together.

It is possible, though unlikely, that FC Twente’s downfall was an exception.  However, one should not underestimate Sporting de Gijon’s current financial situation, for example. A closer look at the ‘map of deals’ tells us that in March 2015 Sporting had only paid €250.000 of the €3.5 million it owed Doyen. A total debt of at least €3 million was confirmed in an official joined statement, dated 29 February 2016. The statement further holds that this debt has to be repaid before 2019, but one cannot help thinking that, for a club like Sporting de Gijón, this is easier said than done. Getting the money from future transfers should be complicated if Sporting only partially owns the economic rights of its own players, plus a looming relegation to the second division at the end of this season will not be beneficial either.[14]

[1] More information on the TPO ban can be found in our previous Blogs, such as “Blog Symposium: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law – Introduction”.

[2] The total amount generated for the 2010/11 season was €641, see Mail Online, “Barca and Real consider sharing TV rights to make La Liga more competitive”; The total amount generated for the 2014/15 season was €742.5 million, see Marca, “Así será el reparto del dinero televisivo”.

[3] As of the 2016-17 season, The English Premier League will make €2.1 billion per year, see Mail Online, "Premier League set for £3bn windfall from global TV rights as rival broadcasters slug it out to screen England-based superstars"

[4] More information on the selling of TV rights in football can be found in our previous Blogs, such as “Why the European Commission will not star in the Spanish TV rights Telenovela”.

[5] See: Map of deals and transactions updated until 10 March 2015.

[6] See: Map of deals and transactions updated until 10 March 2015.

[7] Transfermarkt - Josuha Guilavogui.

[8] The original minimum return of €5.5 million set in September 2013 was increased every year by €500.000 until 1 September 2015, since Doyen continued to own 50% of the Guilavogui’s economic rights.

[9] The players concerned were Roberto Canella Suárez, Álvaro Bustos Sandoval, Alejandro Serrano García, Abdou Karim Tima, Mendy Formose, Juan Muñiz Gallego, Sergio Álvarez Díaz, Óscar Guido Trejo and David Barral Torres.

[10] In the first phase, Doyen receives a percentage of 50% of the economic rights of the nine players until Doyen received an amount of €5 million for the transfer of one or more of those players. After Doyen receives its first €5 million, Doyen’s ownership of the economic rights of the remaining players is to be reduced to 40% until Doyen received an additional €1 million. Once Doyen receives this additional €1 million, Doyen’s ownership of the economic rights of the remaining players would be reduced to 30% until Doyen again receives €1 million from the selling of those players. Consequently, the agreement stipulates that Doyen is to receive an amount equal or superior to €7 million for the transfer of players in which it partly owned the economic rights.

[11] As an exception, Doyen only gets 10% of the economic rights of the players Alberto Botía and Miguel de las Cuevas.

[12] Moreover, the 20% of the transfer fee for De las Cuevas that Sporting owed Doyen consisted of 10% for the economic rights and 10% as an agency fee.

[13] This figure might even get higher when taking into account that Doyen had a share in all Sporting de Gijón players and the fact that Pedro León is still registered as a Getafe player.

[14] With seven matches to go, Sporting finds itself in 17th place.

Editor’s note: Daniela Heerdt is a PhD candidate at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. Her PhD research deals with the establishment of responsibility and accountability for adverse human rights impacts of mega-sporting events, with a focus on FIFA World Cups and Olympic Games. She recently published an article in the International Sports Law Journal that discusses to what extent the revised bidding and hosting regulations by FIFA, the IOC and UEFA strengthen access to remedy for mega-sporting events-related human rights violations.

The 21^st FIFA World Cup is currently underway. Billions of people around the world follow the matches with much enthusiasm and support. For the time being, it almost seems forgotten that in the final weeks leading up to the events, critical reports on human rights issues related to the event piled up. This blog explains why addressing these issues has to start well in advance of the first ball being kicked and cannot end when the final match has been played.

The Warm-up: Preparing for the Game

Even though the recently published update by FIFA’s Human Rights Advisory Board compliments FIFA on its increased efforts for tackling human rights issues related to this year’s World Cup, it is no secret that thousands of workers were exposed to severe human rights violations while working on World Cup construction sites in Russia.[1] Human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) extensively reported on the structural exploitation that workers were facing, including unsafe working conditions leading to numerous injuries and the death of 17 workers, forced illegal work due to lack of employment contracts, and cases of non-payment or serious delays in payment of wages.  Those workers that dared to file a complaint were threatened with retaliation and non-payment of wages.[2] Furthermore, journalists and human rights advocates that tried to report on these cases have been intimidated, denied entry into the country, or even arrested while carrying out their investigations.

Blaming the occurrence of these human rights violations on Russia being this year’s World Cup’s host would ignore the fact that these violations are recurring in the context of mega-sporting events (MSEs) like the Summer or Winter Olympic Games or the World Cup. To a certain extent, these events heighten pre-existing human rights risk in the host country and thereby increase the likelihood for violations to occur. Thus, numerous stories of exploitation of migrant workers have been documented in relation to the construction works for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Furthermore, worker’s rights are not the only rights that are at risk during the delivery of MSEs. Other common types of human rights abuses associated with hosting MSEs are cases of forced displacement, infringements of participatory rights, and infringements of freedom of expression and the right to protest.[3] Shortly before and during these events, reports on incidents of excessive use of force by local police and private security forces, as well as arbitrary arrest and criminalization of homeless people and street children are also commonplace.[4]

The First Half: Establishing Responsibility

The key challenge in addressing these cases is to identify the actor and actions responsible for these harmful outcomes. However, MSEs like the FIFA World Cup are jointly organized and staged by a mix of public, private, national, and international actors. International sports bodies, like FIFA or the International Olympic Committee (IOC), set the terms and conditions under which these events can be hosted. Host countries agree to these conditions by submitting government guarantees and declarations and by adopting special event-related legislation. Furthermore, local and regional authorities issue permits and give orders to enable and facilitate event-related operations. The local organizing committees are responsible for living up to the conditions set by the sports bodies and for hiring the necessary contractors. These range from local to international firms, from city planners and logistic experts, to food suppliers and construction firms.[5] Further companies that profit from the MSE-business are international broadcasting firms and recruitment agencies. The financing of these events is secured through national and international corporate sponsors, such as McDonald’s and Budweiser for this year’s FIFA World Cup.[6]

The intuitive thing to do from a human rights perspective would be to call upon the responsibility of Russia as the host country to address these abuses, since states are not only responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights but also for preventing third parties from abusing human rights on their territory. However, this would ignore the real issue at stake: the fact that MSE-related human rights abuses are the result of complex collaboration between multiple actors involved in delivering these events. In the case of exploitation of workers on World Cup construction sites in Russia, construction companies contribute by imposing abusive employment conditions; recruitment agencies by recruiting the workers under false promises; the state by failing to protect the workers and potentially even facilitating certain practices through its event-related policies; FIFA by requiring a certain number and standard of stadiums for the event; and finally also the sponsors by providing the necessary finances.

This rather simplified identification of the various contributing actors only presents a broad indication of how they contribute to these violations and share responsibility. The problem is that the entanglement of actors and their operations creates highly complex governance structures. In order to identify those actors responsible for the violations, victims first have to untangle these structures and retrace the chain of decisions taken, permits issued, orders given, and actions taken. Even if that succeeds, the key challenges are to identify which of the contributing acts would give rise to legal responsibility and to establish responsibility for those actors that have no direct obligations under international human rights law.

The Second Half:  Establishing Accountability

The entanglement of actors and their contributions does not only impede the identification of the responsible actors but also the identification of adequate accountability mechanisms. The business and human rights field knows a broad spectrum of mechanisms ranging from judicial to non-judicial, and from state-based to operational level mechanisms. Up to this point, the few attempts to hold certain actors accountable for MSE-related human rights violations either have been unsuccessful or only addressed a fraction of the actors or types of violations involved. For example, FIFA’s responsibility for World Cup-related human rights abuses has been the subject of a court case in Switzerland and two specific instances dealt with by the Swiss National Contact Point (NCP). The court in Zürich dismissed the case with unusual speed on mainly practical grounds (a more detailed discussion of the judgement can be found here).[7] The mediation procedure at the Swiss NCP led to the creation of a monitoring system for decent work and safety in the workplace for migrant construction workers in Qatar[8], but their living standards and the abuses of recruitment agencies were not addressed.

What these attempts highlight is that the main shortcomings of available mechanisms amount to a lack of access to these mechanisms for affected groups and individuals and a lack of human rights receptivity of existing mechanisms. In light of these shortcomings, new mechanisms are currently being developed and existing mechanisms are being tested in the MSE and human rights context. Just in time for the start of the World Cup, FIFA launched its new complaint mechanism for human rights defenders, which provides human rights defenders and media representatives with an avenue for complaints for situations “in which they consider that their rights have been unduly restricted when conducting work in relation to FIFA’s activities”.[9] Via an online platform, human rights defenders, journalists and other media representatives can submit a complaint and FIFA commits to ensure that it will apply an “appropriate follow-up processes” to it.[10] FIFA itself is supposed to assess these complaints and seek cooperation with third parties that are involved in the matter and relevant institutions that can support the complainant.[11] With regard to testing existing mechanisms, the possibilities for using arbitration as means to address MSE-related human rights issues opened up with the revised bidding and hosting regulations of FIFA and the IOC. Both entail provisions for human rights protection and arbitration clauses, referring to the Court of Arbitration for Sports, for challenging the performance of the host-city or -country under any of the provisions.

The Overtime: The Winner Takes its Share

One way of interpreting these recent efforts of international sports bodies to increase awareness and respect for human rights protection in connection with their events is to argue that they are increasingly becoming aware of their share of responsibility and accountability. Indeed, the increased awareness of adverse human rights impacts of MSEs triggered a number of initiatives that aim at raising human rights standards in the MSE business. In 2016, the MSE platform for human rights has been created, which is a multi-stakeholder coalition consisting of international and intergovernmental organisations, governments, sports governing bodies, athletes, unions, sponsors, broadcasters, and civil society groups, who are committed to take joint action to protect human rights throughout the MSE lifecycle. Recently, this multi-stakeholder initiative created the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, which is an independent center that connects stakeholders and affected groups to share knowledge, build capacity, and strengthen accountability for adverse human rights impacts of sports more generally. Concrete event-related examples of initiatives exist as well. In the run-up to this year’s World Cup, FIFA, Russian authorities and representatives of trade unions took a joint effort to set up a monitoring program for labour conditions on World Cup construction sites. Similar processes led to the establishment of a worker welfare monitoring system for workers on World Cup construction sites in Qatar.

Nevertheless, significant challenges remain in relation to concrete cases of MSE-related human rights abuses and it is important that these efforts do not fade after the final match has been played. MSE-related human rights violations do not automatically stop when the event is over. In some cases, for instance cases of forced evictions, violations continue as long as victims have not been compensated adequately. These challenges do not make it a hopeless endeavour, but they highlight that more work and change is needed before responsibility for MSE-related human rights violations can be established. Especially, most of the developments and efforts of sports governing bodies are rather recent and only apply to events that will take place in the future. Hence, it remains to be seen whether the revised bidding regulations can ensure that future World Cups will have a more positive human rights legacy and eventually avoid adverse human rights impacts altogether.

[1] Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, ‘Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup’ <https://business-humanrights.org/en/russia-2018-fifa-world-cup> accessed 14 February 2018.

[2] ibid 27.

[3] Megan Corrarino, ‘“Law Exclusion Zones”: Mega-Events as Sites of Procedural and Substantive Human Rights Violations’ (2014) 17 Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 180.

[4] Lucy Amis and John Morrison, ‘Mega-Sporting Events and Human Rights—A Time for More Teamwork?’ (2017) 2 Business and Human Rights Journal 135, 137.

[5] For a more elaborate overview of actors, see Amis and Morrison (n 5) at 136.

[6] Fédération Internationale de Football Association, ‘2018 FIFA World Cup Russia^TM - FIFA Partners’ (FIFA.com, 2017) <http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/partners/index.html> accessed 15 February 2018.

[7] FNV, Bangladeshi Free Trade Union Congress, BWI & Nadim Shariful Alam v FIFA Handelsgericht Kanton Zürich (3 January 2017).

[8] Specific Instance regarding the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) submitted by the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) - Final Statement Swiss National Contact Point (2 May 2017).

[9] FIFA, ‘FIFA Statement on Human Rights Defenders and Media Representatives’ (2018) 4, para 14 <https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/ejf1ecdku14lm2v9zc03.pdf> accessed 12 June 2018.

[10] ibid.

[11] ibid 5, para 15.