Asser International Sports Law Blog

Our International Sports Law Diary
The Asser International Sports Law Centre is part of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut

Balancing Athletes’ Interests and The Olympic Partner Programme: the Bundeskartellamt’s Rule 40 Decision - By Thomas Terraz

Editor’s note: Thomas Terraz is a fourth year LL.B. candidate at the International and European Law programme at The Hague University of Applied Sciences with a specialisation in European Law. Currently he is pursuing an internship at the T.M.C. Asser Institute with a focus on International and European Sports Law.

 

1        Introduction

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), after many years of ineffective pushback (see here, here and here) over bye law 3 of rule 40[1] of the Olympic Charter (OC), which restricts the ability of athletes and their entourage to advertise themselves during the ‘blackout’ period’[2] (also known as the ‘frozen period’) of the Olympic Games, may have been gifted a silver bullet to address a major criticism of its rules. This (potentially) magic formula was handed down in a relatively recent decision of the Bundeskartellamt, the German competition law authority, which elucidated how restrictions to athletes’ advertisements during the frozen period may be scrutinized under EU competition law. The following blog begins by explaining the historical and economic context of rule 40 followed by the facts that led to the decision of the Bundeskartellamt. With this background, the decision of the Bundeskartellamt is analyzed to show to what extent it may serve as a model for EU competition law authorities. More...

Is UCI the new ISU? Analysing Velon’s Competition Law Complaint to the European Commission - By Thomas Terraz

Editor’s note: Thomas Terraz is a fourth year LL.B. candidate at the International and European Law programme at The Hague University of Applied Sciences with a specialisation in European Law. Currently he is pursuing an internship at the T.M.C. Asser Institute with a focus on International and European Sports Law.

 

1.     Introduction

The UCI may soon have to navigate treacherous legal waters after being the subject of two competition law based complaints (see here and here) to the European Commission in less than a month over rule changes and decisions made over the past year. One of these complaints stems from Velon, a private limited company owned by 11 out of the 18 World Tour Teams,[1] and the other comes from the Lega del Ciclismo Professionistico, an entity based in Italy representing an amalgamation of stakeholders in Italian professional cycling. While each of the complaints differ on the actual substance, the essence is the same: both are challenging the way the UCI exercises its regulatory power over cycling because of a growing sense that the UCI is impeding the development of cycling as a sport. Albeit in different ways: Velon sees the UCI infringing on its ability to introduce new race structures and technologies; the Lega del Ciclismo Professionistico believes the UCI is cutting opportunities for semi-professional cycling teams, the middle ground between the World Tour Teams and the amateur teams.

While some of the details remain vague, this blog will aim to unpack part of the claims made by Velon in light of previous case law from both the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to give a preliminary overview of the main legal issues at stake and some of the potential outcomes of the complaint. First, it will be crucial to understand just who/what Velon is before analyzing the substance of Velon’s complaint. More...

International and European Sports Law – Monthly Report – October 2019 by Thomas Terraz

Editor's note: This report compiles the most relevant legal news, events and materials on International and European Sports Law based on the daily coverage provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser. 


The Headlines

International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ) Conference 2019

The T.M.C. Asser Institute and the Asser International Sports Law Centre held the third International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ) Conference on October 24-25. The Conference created a forum for academics and practitioners to discuss, debate and share knowledge on the latest developments of sports law. It featured six uniquely themed panels, which included topics such as ‘Transfer systems in international sports’ and ‘Revisiting the (in)dependence and transparency of the CAS’ to ‘The future of sports: sports law of the future’. The ISLJ Conference was also honored to have two exceptional keynote speakers: Moya Dodd and Ulrich Haas. To kick off the conference, Moya Dodd shared her experiences from an athlete’s perspective in the various boardrooms of FIFA. The second day was then launched by Ulrich Haas, who gave an incredibly thorough and insightful lecture on the importance, function and legal basis of association tribunals in international sport. For a detailed overview of this year’s ISLJ Conference, click here for the official conference report.

The Asser International Sports Law Centre was delighted to have been able to host another great edition of the ISLJ Conference and is thankful to all the participants and speakers who made this edition such a success.

Moving towards greater transparency: Launch of FIFA’s Legal Portal

On October 31, FIFA announced that it was introducing a new legal portal on its website that will give greater access to numerous documents that previously were kept private. FIFA explains that this is in order to help increase its transparency, which was one of the key ‘Guiding Principles’ highlighted in FIFA 2.0: The Vision for the Future released in 2016. This development comes as many sport governing bodies face increasing criticism for the opacity of its judicial bodies’ decisions, which can have tremendous economic and societal impacts. The newly available documents will include: ‘decisions rendered on the merits by the FIFA Disciplinary Committee and the FIFA Appeal Committee (notified as of 1 January 2019); decisions rendered on the merits by the FIFA Ethics Committee (notified since 1 January 2019); decisions rendered on the merits by the FIFA Players’ Status Committee and the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber; non-confidential CAS awards in proceedings to which FIFA is a party (notified since 1 January 2019); list of CAS arbitrators proposed by FIFA for appointment by ICAS, and the number of times they have been nominated in CAS proceedings’. The list of decisions from all the aforementioned bodies are updated every four months, according to their respective webpages. However, time will ultimately tell how consistently decisions are published. Nevertheless, this move is a major milestone in FIFA’s journey towards increasing its transparency.

Hong Kong Protests, Human Rights and (e)Sports Law: The Blizzard and NBA controversies

Both Blizzard, a major video game developer, and the NBA received a flurry of criticism for their responses to persons expressing support for the Hong Kong protests over the past month. On October 8, Blizzard sanctioned Blitzchung, a professional Hearthstone player who expressed support of the Hong Kong protest during a post-match interview, by eliminating the prize money he had won and suspending him for one year from any Hearthstone tournament. Additionally, Blizzard will cease to work with the casters who conducted the interview. With mounting disapproval over the sanctions,  J. Allen Brack, the president of Blizzard, restored the prize money and reduced the period of ineligibility to 6 months.

The NBA controversy started when Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted his support for the protests in Hong Kong. The tweet garnered much attention, especially in China where it received a lot of backlash, including an announcement from CCTV, the official state broadcaster in China, that it was suspending all broadcasts of the NBA preseason games. In attempts to appease its Chinese audience, which is a highly profitable market for the NBA, Morey deleted the tweet and posted an apology, and the NBA responded by saying that the initial tweet was ‘regrettable’. Many scolded these actions and accused the NBA of censorship to which the NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, responded that the NBA remains committed to freedom of expression.

Both cases highlighted how (e)sport organizations may be faced with competing interests to either guarantee greater protection of human rights or to pursue interests that perhaps have certain financial motivations. More...


ISLJ International Sports Law Conference 2019 - Conference Report - By Thomas Terraz

On October 24th and 25th 2019, the T.M.C. Asser Institute and the International Sports Law Centre hosted the International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ) Conference for a third year in a row, bringing together a group of academics and practitioners from around the world. This year’s conference celebrated the 20th year of the International Sports Law Journal, which was originally started by Robert Siekmann. Over the past 20 years, the ISLJ has aimed to be a truly international journal that addresses global topics in sports law while keeping the highest academic standards.

With this background, the conference facilitated discussions and exchanges over six differently themed panels on international sports law’s most pertinent issues and gave participants wide opportunities to engage with one another. Additionally, this year’s edition also had the great honor of hosting two distinguished keynote speakers, Moya Dodd and Ulrich Haas, who were able to share their wealth of experience and knowledge with the conference participants.

The following report aims to give an overview of the ISLJ Conference 2019 to extract and underline the fundamental ideas raised by the different speakers.More...

International and European Sports Law – Monthly Report – August and September 2019 - By Thomas Terraz

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.

 

The Headlines

Another Russian Doping Crisis? Inconsistencies Uncovered in the Data from the Moscow Lab

Storm clouds are brewing once more in the Russian Doping Saga, after several inconsistencies were uncovered by WADA from data retrieved from the Moscow Laboratory. More specifically, a certain number of positive tests had been removed from the data WADA retrieved from the Moscow Laboratory compared to the one received from the original whistleblower. WADA launched a formal compliance procedure on 23 September, giving three weeks for Russian authorities to respond and provide their explanations. WADA’s Compliance Review Committee is set to meet on 23 October in order to determine whether to recommend declaring Russia non-compliant.

Russian authorities are not the only ones now facing questions in light of these new revelations. Criticism of WADA’s decision to declare Russia compliant back in September 2018 have been reignited by stakeholders. That original decision had been vehemently criticized (see also Edwin Moses’ response), particularly by athlete representative groups.

The fallout of these data discrepancies may be far reaching if Russian authorities are unable to provide a satisfying response. There are already whispers of another impending Olympic Games ban and the possibility of a ban extending to other sports signed to the WADA Code. In the meantime, the IAAF has already confirmed that the Russian Athletes would compete as ‘authorised neutral athletes’ at the World Athletics Championship in Doha, Qatar.

Legal Challenges Ahead to Changes to the FIFA Football Transfer Market

FIFA is set to make amendments to its player transfer market that take aim at setting new boundaries for football agents. These changes will prohibit individuals from representing both the buying and selling club in the same transaction and set new limits on agent commissions (3 percent for the buying club and player representative and 10 percent for the selling team). FIFA is already in the process of creating a central clearinghouse through which all transfer payments would have to pass through, including agent commissions. FIFA will be making a final decision on these proposed changes at the FIFA Council meeting on 24 October.

If these proposed changes are confirmed, they will almost certainly be challenged in court. The British trade organization representing football agents, Association of Football Agents, has already begun its preparations for a costly legal battle by sending a plea to its members for donations. It claims that it had not been properly consulted by FIFA before this decision had been made. On the other hand, FIFA claims that ‘there has been a consultation process with a representative group of agents’ and that FIFA kept ‘an open dialogue with agents’. Regardless, if these proposed changes go through, FIFA will be on course to a looming legal showdown.

CAS Public Hearing in the Sun Yang Case: One Step Forward for Transparency?

On 20 August, 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced that the hearing in the appeal procedure of the Sun Yang case will be held publicly. It will be only the second time in its history that a public hearing has been held (the last one being in 1999, Michelle Smith De Bruin v. FINA). WADA has appealed the original decision of the FINA Doping Panel which had cleared Sun Yang from an alleged anti-doping rule violation. The decision to make the hearing public was at the request of both parties. The hearing is set to take place November 15th and is likely to be an important milestone in improving the CAS’ transparency.

Sun Yang, who has already served a doping ban for a previous violation in 2014, has also been at the center of another controversy, where Mack Horton, an Australian swimmer, refused to shake hands and stand on the podium with Sun Yang at the world championships in Gwangju. More...

Caster Semenya’s Legal Battle Against Gender Stereotypes: On Nature, Law and Identity - By Sofia Balzaretti (University of Fribourg)

Editor's note: Sofia Balzaretti is a Graduate research assistant and a PhD candidate at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) where she is writing a thesis on the Protection against Gender Stereotypes in International Law. In addition to research in human rights and feminist legal theory, she has also carried out some research in legal philosophy and on the relationship between gender and the law.

 

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the monitoring body of track and field athletics, regularly submitted South African middle distance runner and Olympic gold medalist Mokgadi Caster Semenya to sex verification tests when it began questioning her sexual characteristics and speculating whether her body belonged on the Disorder of Sex Development (DSD) spectrum. DSD Syndrome is often defined as an “intersex condition” which affects the clear development of either/or genitalia, gonads and chromosomes into one distinctive sex or another. The spectrum of the intersex condition is particularly wide, and the disorder can sometimes be minimal - some cases of female infertility can actually be explained by an intersex condition.

The IAAF deemed the controversial sex verification tests necessary on the grounds that it was required to prove Semenya did not have a “medical condition” which could give her an “unfair advantage”. It was eventually found that, because of an intersex trait, Semenya did have abnormally high levels of testosterone for a woman, which, in the IAAF’s opinion, justified a need for regulatory hormonal adjustments in order for her to keep competing in the women’s category. The IAAF also funded research to determine how ‘hyperandrogenism’ affects athletic performance. In 2018, it issued Eligibility Regulations on Female Classification (“Athlete with Differences of Sexual Development”) for events from 400m to the mile, including 400m, hurdles races, 800m and 1’500m. The IAAF rules indicated that in case of an existing high level of testosterone, suppression or regulation by chemotherapy, hormonal castration, and/or iatrogenic irradiation was mandatory in order to take part in these events.

Semenya and her lawyers challenged the IAAF Regulations in front of the CAS, who, in a very controversial decision, deemed the Regulations a necessary, reasonable and proportionate mean “of achieving the aim of what is described as the integrity of female athletics and for the upholding of the ‘protected class’ of female athletes in certain events” (§626). More...

International and European Sports Law – Monthly Report – June and July 2019 - By Tomáš Grell

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.

 

The Headlines

The European Court of Justice finds that rule of a sports association excluding nationals of other Member States from domestic amateur athletics championships may be contrary to EU law

On 13 June 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered a preliminary ruling at the request of the Amtsgericht Darmstadt (Local Court Darmstadt, Germany) filed in the course of the proceedings involving Mr Daniele Biffi, an Italian amateur athlete residing in Germany, and his athletics club TopFit based in Berlin, on the one hand, and the German athletics association Deutscher Leichtathletikverband, on the other. The case concerned a rule adopted by the German athletics association under which nationals of other Member States are not allowed to be awarded the title of national champion in senior amateur athletics events as they may only participate in such events outside/without classification. The ECJ’s task was to decide whether or not the rule in question adheres to EU law.

The ECJ took the view that the two justifications for the rule in question put forward by the German athletics association did not appear to be founded on objective considerations and called upon the Amtsgericht Darmstadt to look for other considerations that would pursue a legitimate objective. In its judgment, the ECJ analysed several important legal questions, including amongst others the applicability of EU law to amateur sport or the horizontal applicability of European citizenship rights (for detailed analysis of the judgment, please see our blog written by Thomas Terraz).

Milan not featuring in this season’s edition of Europa League following a settlement with UEFA

On 28 June 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rendered a consent award giving effect to a settlement agreement between UEFA and the Milan Football Club, under which the Italian club agreed to serve a one-year ban from participation in UEFA club competitions as a result of its breaches of UEFA’s financial fair play regulations over the 2015/2016/2017 and the 2016/2017/2018 monitoring periods, while the European football’s governing body agreed to set aside previous decisions of the Investigatory and Adjudicatory Chamber of its Club Financial Control Body which had found Milan guilty of the respective breaches.   

This was not the first intervention of the CAS related to Milan’s (non-)compliance with UEFA’s financial fair play regulations. In July 2018, the CAS annulled the decision of the Adjudicatory Chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body of 19 June 2018 which was supposed to lead to the exclusion of the Italian club from UEFA club competitions for which it would otherwise qualify in the next two seasons (i.e. 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 seasons). Following such intervention of the CAS – which concerned the 2015/2016/2017 monitoring period – it may have appeared that Milan would eventually manage to escape a ban from participation in UEFA club competitions for breaches of UEFA’s financial fair play regulations. However, Milan’s case was again referred to the Adjudicatory Chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body in April 2019 – this time its alleged breaches of UEFA’s financial fair play regulations concerned the 2016/2017/2018 monitoring period – and such referral apparently forced Milan into negotiations with UEFA which led to the settlement agreement ratified by the CAS.      

Swiss Federal Tribunal gives Caster Semenya a glimmer of hope at first but then stops her from running at the IAAF World Championships in Doha

Caster Semenya’s legal team brought an appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal in late May against the landmark ruling of the CAS which gave the IAAF the green light to apply its highly contentious Eligibility Regulations for Female Classification (Athlete with Difference of Sexual Development) preventing female athletes with naturally elevated levels of testosterone from participating in certain athletic events unless they take medication to supress such levels of testosterone below the threshold of five nmol/L for a continuous period of at least six months. The appeal yielded some positive partial results for Caster Semenya early on as the Swiss Federal Tribunal ordered the IAAF on 3 June 2019 to suspend the implementation of the contested regulations. However, the Swiss Federal Tribunal overturned its decision at the end of July which means that Caster Semenya is no longer able to run medication-free and this will most likely be the case also when the 2019 IAAF World Athletics Championships kick off in Doha in less than one month’s time. The procedural decisions adopted by the Swiss Federal Tribunal thus far have no impact on the merits of Caster Semenya’s appeal.More...

Book Review - Football and the Law, Edited by Nick De Marco - By Despina Mavromati (SportLegis/University of Lausanne)

 Editor's Note: Dr. Despina Mavromati, LL.M., M.B.A., FCIArb is an Attorney-at-law specialized in international sports law and arbitration (SportLegis) and a Member of the UEFA Appeals Body. She teaches sports arbitration and sports contracts at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and is a former Managing Counsel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.


This comprehensive book of more than 500 pages with contributions by 53 authors and edited by Nick De Marco QC “aims to embody the main legal principles and procedures that arise in football law”. It is comprised of 29 chapters and includes an index, a table of football regulations and a helpful table of cases including CAS awards, UEFA & FIFA Disciplinary Committee decisions and Football Association, Premier League and Football League decisions. 

The 29 chapters cover a wide range of regulatory and legal issues in football, predominantly from the angle of English law. This is logical since both the editor and the vast majority of contributing authors are practitioners from England.

Apart from being of evident use to anyone involved in English football, the book offers additional basic principles that are likely to be of use also to those involved in football worldwide, including several chapters entirely dedicated to the European and International regulatory framework on football: chapter 3 (on International Federations) gives an overview of the pyramidal structure of football internationally and delineates the scope of jurisdiction among FIFA and the confederations; chapter 4 explains European law and its application on football deals mostly with competition issues and the free movement of workers; and chapter 29 deals with international football-related disputes and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In addition to the chapters exclusively dealing with international football matters, international perspectives and the international regulatory landscape is systematically discussed – in more or less depth, as the need might be – in several other chapters of the book, including: chapter 2 on the “Institutions” (from governing bodies to stakeholders groups in football); chapter 6 on the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP); chapter 8 dealing with (national and international) player transfers; chapter 11 (on Third Party Investment) and chapter 16 on Financial Fair Play (mostly discussing the UEFA FFP Regulations); chapter 23  on disciplinary matters (very briefly discussing the disciplinary procedures under FIFA and UEFA Disciplinary rules); chapter 24 on domestic and international doping-related cases in football, with an overview of the CAS jurisprudence in this respect; and finally chapter 23 on corruption and match-fixing (with a very short description of the FIFA and UEFA regulations).

Furthermore, the book offers extensive chapters in less discussed – yet of high importance – football topics, including: chapter 13 on image rights and key clauses in image rights agreements; chapter 14 on taxation (referring also to taxation issues in image rights and intermediary fees); chapter 15 on sponsoring and commercial rights, with a guide on the principal provisions in a football sponsoring contract and various types of disputes arising out of sponsorship rights; chapter 17 on personal injury, discussing the duty of care in football cases (from the U.K.); and chapter 18 on copyright law and broadcasting (with short references to the European law and the freedom to supply football broadcasting services).

Some chapters seem to have a more general approach to the subject matter at issue without necessarily focusing on football. These include chapters 27 (on mediation) and 22 (on privacy and defamation), and even though they were drafted by reputable experts in their fields, I would still like to see chapter 27 discuss in more detail the specific aspects, constraints and potential of mediation in football-related disputes as opposed to a general overview of mediation as a dispute-resolution mechanism. The same goes for chapter 22, but this could be explained by the fact that there are not necessarily numerous football-specific cases that are publicly available. 

As is internationally known, “football law” is male-dominated. This is also demonstrated in the fact that of the 53 contributing authors, all of them good colleagues and most of them renowned in their field, only eight are female (15%). Their opinions, however, are of great importance to the book due to the subject matter on which these women have contributed, such as player contracts (Jane Mulcahy QC), player transfers (Liz Coley), immigration issues in football (Emma Mason), broadcasting (Anita Davies) or disciplinary issues (Alice Bricogne).

The book is a success not only due to the great good work done by its editor, Nick De Marco QC but first and foremost due to its content, masterfully prepared by all 53 authors. On the one hand, the editor carefully delimited and structured the scope of each topic in a logical order and in order to avoid overlaps (a daunting task in case of edited volumes with numerous contributors like this one!), while on the other hand, all 53 authors followed a logical and consistent structure in their chapters and ensured an expert analysis that would have not been possible had this book been authored by one single person.  

Overall, I found this book to be a great initiative and a very useful and comprehensive guide written by some of the most reputable experts. The chapters are drafted in a clear and understandable way and the editor did a great job putting together some of the most relevant and topical legal and regulatory issues from the football field, thus filling a much-needed gap in the “football law” literature.

Can a closed league in e-Sports survive EU competition law scrutiny? The case of LEC - By Thomas Terraz

Editor’s note: Thomas Terraz is a third year LL.B. candidate at the International and European Law programme at The Hague University of Applied Sciences with a specialisation in European Law. Currently he is pursuing an internship at the T.M.C. Asser Institute with a focus on International and European Sports Law.


1.     Introduction

The organizational structure of sports in Europe is distinguished by its pyramid structure which is marked by an open promotion and relegation system. A truly closed system, without promotion and relegation, is unknown to Europe, while it is the main structure found in North American professional sports leagues such as the NFL, NBA and the NHL. Recently, top European football clubs along with certain members of UEFA have been debating different possibilities of introducing a more closed league system to European football. Some football clubs have even wielded the threat of forming an elite closed breakaway league. Piercing through these intimidations and rumors, the question of whether a closed league system could even survive the scrutiny of EU competition law remains. It could be argued that an agreement between clubs to create a completely closed league stifles competition and would most likely trigger the application of Article 101 and 102 TFEU.[1] Interestingly, a completely closed league franchise system has already permeated the European continent. As outlined in my previous blog, the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) is a European e-sports competition that has recently rebranded and restructured this year from an open promotion and relegation system to a completely closed franchise league to model its sister competition from North America, the League Championship Series. This case is an enticing opportunity to test how EU competition law could apply to such a competition structure.

As a preliminary note, this blog does not aim to argue whether the LEC is a ‘real’ sport competition and makes the assumption that the LEC could be considered as a sports competition.[2]

More...



I’m A Loser Baby, So Let’s Kill Transparency – Recent Changes to the Olympic Games Host City Selection Process - By Ryan Gauthier (Thompson Rivers University)

Editor's Note: Ryan Gauthier is Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. Ryan’s research addresses the governance of sports organisations, with a particular focus on international sports organisations. His PhD research examined the accountability of the International Olympic Committee for human rights violations caused by the organisation of the Olympic Games.


Big June 2019 for Olympic Hosting

On June 24, 2019, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected Milano-Cortina to host the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. Milano-Cortina’s victory came despite a declaration that the bid was “dead” just months prior when the Italian government refused to support the bid. Things looked even more dire for the Italians when 2006 Winter Games host Turin balked at a three-city host proposal. But, when the bid was presented to the members of the IOC Session, it was selected over Stockholm-Åre by 47 votes to 34. 

Just two days later, the IOC killed the host selection process as we know it. The IOC did this by amending two sections of the Olympic Charter in two key ways. First, the IOC amended Rule 33.2, eliminating the requirement that the Games be selected by an election seven years prior to the Games. While an election by the IOC Session is still required, the seven-years-out requirement is gone.

Second, the IOC amended Rule 32.2 to allow for a broader scope of hosts to be selected for the Olympic Games. Prior to the amendment, only cities could host the Games, with the odd event being held in another location. Now, while cities are the hosts “in principle”, the IOC had made it so: “where deemed appropriate, the IOC may elect several cities, or other entities, such as regions, states or countries, as host of the Olympic Games.”

The change to rule 33.2 risks undoing the public host selection process. The prior process included bids (generally publicly available), evaluation committee reports, and other mechanisms to make the bidding process transparent. Now, it is entirely possible that the IOC may pre-select a host, and present just that host to the IOC for an up-or-down vote. This vote may be seven years out from the Games, ten years out, or two years out. More...


Asser International Sports Law Blog | Never let a good fiasco go to waste: why and how the governance of European football should be reformed after the demise of the ‘SuperLeague’ - By Stephen Weatherill

Asser International Sports Law Blog

Our International Sports Law Diary
The Asser International Sports Law Centre is part of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut

Never let a good fiasco go to waste: why and how the governance of European football should be reformed after the demise of the ‘SuperLeague’ - By Stephen Weatherill

Editor’s note: Stephen Weatherill is the Jacques Delors Professor of European Law at Oxford University. He also serves as Deputy Director for European Law in the Institute of European and Comparative Law, and is a Fellow of Somerville College. This blog appeared first on eulawanalysis.blogspot.com and is reproduced here with the agreement of the author. 

 


The crumbling of the ‘SuperLeague’ is a source of joy to many football fans, but the very fact that such an idea could be advanced reveals something troublingly weak about the internal governance of football in Europe – UEFA’s most of all – and about the inadequacies of legal regulation practised by the EU and/ or by states. This note explains why a SuperLeague is difficult to stop under the current pattern of legal regulation and why accordingly reform is required in order to defend the European model of sport with more muscularity.

 

The creature that will not die

What, again?

It is over twenty years since since ‘Project Gandalf’, a plan for a European Football League prepared by Media Partners International, was notified to the Commission (OJ 1999 C70/5). Since then football in Europe has been played with a regular rhythm in the background: the threat of a breakaway ‘SuperLeague’ driven by the richest and most successful clubs. UEFA, the sport’s governing body in Europe, has responded. Alterations made periodically to the structure of its principal and most lucrative club competition, the Champions League, have favoured the interests of the richest and most successful clubs and, in a macabre dance, those changes have typically followed those clubs’ well-briefed grumbling and plotting. And Monday 19 April 2021 was glumly anticipated by football fans as the latest reel around the fountain: UEFA, media reports confidently predicted, would further compromise the structure of its competitions in order to give the richest and most successful clubs more of what they want – more games and firmer guarantees of participation.

But Monday 19 April instead brought the ‘SuperLeague’ clattering out of its murky background as threat and into the harsh light of day as execution. A group of twelve clubs from England, Spain and Italy announced the creation of an entirely new competition which would operate beyond the authority of UEFA. The self-chosen clubs are all rich, though several groan under mountainous debts. There is no plausible world in which this dozen would count as Europe’s undisputed finest in terms of sporting merit: their status is commercially driven. The plans guarantee the long-term participation of the founding clubs, and so would remove the threat of relegation from the new SuperLeague. This is entirely alien to the orthodox model of football Leagues across Europe. And the clubs plan to have their cake and eat it. They intend to play midweek games in the brand new SuperLeague while remaining members of their national associations, and so continuing to play in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A as well as selected national Cup competitions. But they will no longer play in UEFA’s Champions League, which will therefore be robbed of most of its richest and most successful clubs, and also Arsenal and Spurs.

And then it crumbled.

Within 48 hours of the new competition’s announcement its proponents were racing each other from West London across East Manchester and beyond to see who could put most distance between themselves and a plan which had attracted almost universal derision and dismay. No longer a League from which its founder members could not be relegated, the SuperLeague had turned into a competition from which its clubs were desperate to knock themselves out. This Italian, Spanish and English Job had been intended to cause an explosion within European football, yet they couldn’t even blow the bloody doors off.

Gleeful mockery has its short-term place. This SuperLeague is dead. But the idea behind it and the people who drove it are not. A breakaway league in European football is the creature that will not die. Now is the time to think about the inadequacies of legal regulation of sport in Europe, in order to be prepared to defend the European model of sport the next time that a plan of this disruptive type is advanced, likely with greater strategic cunning. 

 

Why the law is not currently adequate

UEFA was doubly offended by the SuperLeague. The traditional regulatory model of European football was cast aside. No longer would qualification on merit be the sole criterion for participation. The infusion of fresh blood ensured by the system of promotion and relegation would be stopped. UEFA oversight would be precluded. The commercial model of recent years would be gravely imperilled too. UEFA’s Champions League is a spectacular success and provides UEFA with a valuable source of income. The ‘SuperLeague’ is a huge threat.

What could UEFA do?

The key insight is that UEFA is doubly offended because UEFA has a double function. It is a regulatory body but it is also a commercial actor. It protects the structure of the sport but it also makes money out of the sport. Most governing bodies in sport began in the days of well-meaning amateurs, carrying out the task of imposing routine and order on the rules of the game and the conduct of competitions, but in recent years, largely as a result of changes to the regulatory and technological shape of the audiovisual media sector, sport has increasingly become commercially lucrative to a dazzling degree. Governing bodies have typically added these new commercially sensitive functions to their longer-standing regulatory role by an incremental process of accumulation. UEFA, like many governing bodies in sport, sets the rules of the game but it has also become highly profitable. 

This is where and why the application of legal rules to governing bodies in sport becomes awkward. No one doubts that UEFA has a legitimate role. Sport needs a regulator, to set the rules, to impose order on the calendar, to protect the welfare of players and fans, and so on. But equally no one doubts that regulatory choices have direct commercial consequences. If UEFA decides to impose sanctions on those involved in a ‘SuperLeague’ it will be able to present such steps as a means to defend the integrity of the model of sport that has long dominated European practice. But it will stand accused of seeking to promote its own commercial interest in maintaining monopoly control over the Champions League by suppressing the emergence of a new form of competition, a SuperLeague, which might generate high levels of consumer demand and which, if the restless dozen are to be believed, had already generated lucrative financial backing. Both these perspectives contain their truths – regulatory and commercial motivations inevitably overlap in the governance of sport. 

Imagine UEFA had carried through its threats to impose sanctions, which, in their most vigorous form, would have involved banning participating clubs and players from any involvement in football other than the ‘SuperLeague’ itself. To achieve that would involve action not only by UEFA but also the relevant national football associations and, to exclude players form the World Cup too, FIFA. Would EU law oppose a response of this type, designed to protect European football’s traditional structures?

The problem in short is – it is not clear.

There is nothing explicit in EU law that addresses the matter. Sport was not even mentioned in the founding Treaties until as late as 2009, and the provision then inserted, Article 165 TFEU, is programmatic rather than precise. EU secondary legislation on sport is thin and of no relevance to the matter at hand. EU sports law largely comprises the patchwork of decisions of the Court and the Commission which have, since the very first in 1974 (Case 36/74 Walrave and Koch ECLI:EU:C:1974:140), addressed the compatibility of practices in sport with the demands of EU internal market law. This concerned initially the law of free movement, applied in the famous Bosman case (Case C-415/93 ECLI:EU:C:1995:463), and latterly competition law. And it is EU competition law which provides the most obvious objection to UEFA’s desire to take action against the promoters of and participants in a ‘SuperLeague’.

It is necessary to try to sift the existing practice of the Commission and Court to try to piece together an understanding of how EU competition law would apply in these circumstances. Nothing is predetermined. This, then, is already a problem – it is impossible to predict with confidence exactly how far UEFA’s autonomy of action is constrained by EU competition law.

Let us try. The most recent decision in which EU competition law has been applied to sport is also the one that is factually closest to the case of a governing body taking action to protecting its model against third party organisers wanting to offer competing events. It is the International Skating Union decision. 

 

The International Skating Union decision (ISU).

In December 2017 the Commission decided that the eligibility rules of the International Skating Union (ISU) were incompatible with EU competition law, specifically Article 101 TFEU on anti-competitive bilateral and multilateral practices (AT.40208). The Commission’s Decision was upheld on appeal to the General Court, which in December 2020 approved all the key findings made by the Commission (Case T-93/18 International Skating Union v Commission EU:T:2020:610).

The core of the objections in ISU were targeted at the governing body’s treatment of skaters who chose to take part in events that were not approved by the ISU. The ISU had power conferred on it as the sole governing body in the sport recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban such skaters from the Olympic Games and the World Championship. The ISU was able to act, and did act, in a way that protected and promoted the events which it organized at the expense of competing suppliers. The Commission’s Decision reached the conclusion that it reserved to itself powers in a way that exceeded what was necessary for the organization of the sport and for the maintenance of its integrity. It had pursued activities in the global market for the organisation and exploitation of international speed skating events in circumstances where its regulatory function overlapped with commercial motivations. The ISU had – according to both the Commission and the General Court - a conflict of interest. By stretching its activities beyond the regulatory domain into areas which prioritised its own commercial interests at the expense of third parties in the market, the governing body had acted in an anti-competitive manner contrary to Article 101 TFEU. 

The responsible EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, commenting at the time on the Commission ISU decision, was eager to treat the ruling as an expression of general principle, not simply one confined to its own particular facts. She explained that where a single federation organises competitions from local to international level according to the global pyramid structure which characterises the governance of most sports, ‘the penalties these federations impose should be necessary and proportionate to achieve’ goals associated with the proper conduct of the sport, but they ‘certainly shouldn't be used to unfairly favour the federation's own commercial interests, at the expense of athletes and other organisers’. 

The ISU Decision shows that EU competition law restrains the autonomy of governing bodies in sport, but the assymetry of power between the ISU and skaters has little in common with the more balanced relationship between UEFA and the biggest football clubs. So, in the search to understand how EU competition law restrains UEFA, ISU is a clue, but not definitive.

 

ISU and past practice

ISU is not a one-off: this is not the only material on which we can draw to understand how EU law affects and restricts UEFA’s options in responding to the SuperLeague. A wonderful book published in 2015 bursts with relevant ideas (K. Pijetlovic, EU Sports Law and Breakaway Leagues in Football). And the structure of the ISU ruling fits comfortably into the EU’s track record in applying EU law to sport. The need for a regulator in sport is acknowledged. A game needs common rules, predictably applied and apt to secure the integrity of competition. But such activities shall not spill over beyond what is necessary for the proper organisation of the sport, and there is special suspicion of systems of governance which are structured or applied in a way that prioritises the commercial interests of the governing body in question. 

In Meca Medina and Majcen v Commission (Case C-519/04P EU:C:2006:492) the Court explained that the compatibility of rules with EU competition law cannot be assessed in the abstract. The legal assessment of practices that have the effect of restricting competition also includes examination of their objectives. The Court decided that the imposition of sanctions for violation of anti-doping rules did not necessarily constitute a forbidden restriction of competition within the meaning of (what is now) Article 101 TFEU, since they were justified by the legitimate objective of preserving healthy sport, though it added that attention would need to be paid in detail to fair procedure and proportionate sanctions. Bosman (Case C-415/93 ECLI:EU:C:1995:463 ), a free movement rather than a competition law case, similarly permits the interpretation of EU law to be informed by the sporting context in which it is applied. So, famously, the Court declared that ‘In view of the considerable social importance of sporting activities and in particular football in the Community, the aims of maintaining a balance between clubs by preserving a certain degree of equality and uncertainty as to results and of encouraging the recruitment and training of young players must be accepted as legitimate’. The Court ruled against the particular transfer system of which Bosman had fallen foul because it went too far to apply collectively enforced restraints to the contractual freedom even of players whose contracts had expired. But the Court was plainly receptive to an adjusted regime which addressed the legitimate concerns it had mapped in the ruling. The transfer system was duly amended to apply only to players whose contract has not expired, and it lives on today in that slimmed down form.

There followed Motosykletistiki Omospondia Ellados NPID v Elliniko Dimosio – commonly abbreviated to MOTOE and known as the ‘Greek motorcycling’ case (Case C-49/07 EU:C:2008:376). It was held that ELPA, a body granted legal authority under Greek law to decide whether or not to permit the staging of motorcycling competitions, had violated Article 102 TFEU by running a system in which ELPA itself was engaged in the organisation and commercial exploitation of motorcycling events. The problem was that in the circumstances ELPA had ‘an obvious advantage over its competitors’; its gatekeeping right allowed it to ‘distort competition by favouring events which it organises or those in whose organisation it participates’. 

Article 165(1) TFEU, introduced into the Treaty with effect from 2009, directs that the EU ‘shall contribute to the promotion of European sporting issues, while taking account of the specific nature of sport, its structures based on voluntary activity and its social and educational function’. But both the Court and the Commission have long been assiduous in interpreting and applying EU internal market law in a way that recognises the legitimate concerns that arise in sport. Article 165 merely codifies that contextual sensitivity. EU law has been shaped according to a model whereby sport enjoys ‘conditional autonomy’ under EU law (see S. Weatherill, Principles and Practice in EU Sports Law, 2017). Governing bodies are able to operate consistently with EU law on condition that they demonstrate why their practices are necessary for the organisation of their sport – to defend its ‘integrity’, as is asserted in ISU. It is when governing bodies reach beyond the sphere of legitimate and necessary regulation that they tend to come into conflict with EU law – for example by applying the transfer rules even to out-of-contract players or by leveraging regulatory power to enhance a position in the market at the expense of commercial rivals. 

 

The legitimate reach of a governing body’s regulatory power

In ISU the objection was not to the role of a governing body acting as gatekeeper, in order to impose order on a sport’s calendar: the objection was to leveraging that regulatory power to achieve commercial advantage. The problem was a conflict of interest between regulatory concerns and profit-making, and it is an endemic problem in sports governance given the rising commercial value of sport alongside a reluctance among governing bodies to establish systems which sharply separate the regulatory from the commercial sphere. 

ISU insists on review of a governing body’s regulatory choices for fear that they may generate anti-competitive consequences. But it does not assume that the supply of competitive sporting events shall become a wholly unregulated market. Neither the Commission nor the General Court in ISU objects to the notion that sports governing bodies shall be able in principle to arrange the calendar, to decide how many events should be permitted, to ensure safety standards are met, and to perform a broader gate-keeping function. The Commission went out of its way in ISU to state that protecting the integrity and good functioning of the sport is a legitimate objective pursued by a governing body and this is confirmed in the ruling of the General Court. So too Commissioner Vestager, reflecting on the Decision, insisted that ‘we're certainly not questioning the right of …federations to do their job of organising the sport’. 

The question: where to draw the line between legitimate supervision and anti-competitive conduct?

 

SuperLeague

Would EU law have precluded UEFA from taking steps to oppose the SuperLeague? 

It is plain that UEFA would gain commercial advantage by killing off the SuperLeague. But the exercise of regulatory power commonly has some commercial consequence – that unavoidable overlap does not take the governing body’s activities over the line. The real issue is whether the exercise of regulatory power is necessary to secure the organisation of the sport.

ISU was an extreme case. The power imbalance between ISU and the skaters was very great; and the penalties envisaged by ISU went beyond any conceivable band of proportionate response. Given the aggressive suppression of third party organisers that was involved, disclosing a clear strategy of furthering the ISU’s own commercial aspirations in staging skating competitions, there was no need for the notion of protecting the ‘integrity’ of sport to be explored in any depth. The Commission and the General Court did not trouble to do so. Meca-Medina too, though the leading case, does not help to tease out the precise boundaries of the zone of legitimate action to police the integrity of sport, because anti-doping procedures plainly fall within it.

UEFA’s position in the face of rebellion by the major football clubs would have obvious distinctions from the situations found in MOTOE and ISU, most of all that its concern to defend the integrity of its existing structures would seem to carry much more weight given that the leading football clubs possess a destructive power which the third parties in MOTOEand ISU did not. The SuperLeague was clearly designed to reduce the Champions League to a sideshow, if not to destroy it altogether. 

Two questions structure the legal inquiry. What legitimate objectives may UEFA defend? And, assuming legitimate objectives have been identified, what are the permissible limits of action designed to defend them?

Once again the problem is that these are not matters set out cleanly in any existing legal texts. But let us try.

Can UEFA adopt measures to secure the integrity of its competitions' ability to produce the one true champion: that is, can UEFA take steps to stop European football looking like boxing? I think this is plausible, and it would justify action designed to ensure that UEFA’s Champions League has a higher profile and greater appeal than any breakaway competition.

Can UEFA adopt measures to suppress a competition where access is not based on merit and/or where promotion and relegation are curtailed: that is, can UEFA take steps to stop European football looking like sports leagues in North America? I think this is also plausible, and it would justify action designed to curtail the viability of any breakaway competition.

UEFA has other plausible legitimate objectives on which it may rely in responding to the threat of a SuperLeague. Protecting the calendar to prevent player overload would belong on this list; so too would protecting the pyramid structure of governance in order to ensure that all competitions are subject to the same rules globally rather than fragmented according to which organiser is in charge; and the re-distribution of income raised at élite level throughout the structure of the sport, in order to achieve some degree of vertical solidarity, is a further relevant concern. 

If (some or all of) those are legitimate aims, then one would need also to check whether UEFA's measures are proportionate and apt to achieve the end in view. The length of any ban would  be legally relevant, so too the breadth of its scope. The harsher the penalty, the less likely it is to survive proportionality-based review - yet of course the harsher the penalty, the more effective it is likely to be. Here too a detailed context-specific analysis would be required, but one may think that sanctions imposed on clubs would be more readily shown to be necessary and therefore justified than sanctions imposed on individual players. 

The implications under competition law would not be limited to measures taken directly by UEFA. The collective sale of broadcasting and other media rights to the UEFA Champions League falls within the scope of Article 101 because it restricts supply (by individual clubs as sellers), but it is permitted on the basis that it generates sufficient economic benefits.  It remains to be seen whether the sale of rights to a SuperLeague would be treated with similar indulgence: its closed nature and the extent to which it shares the proceeds of collective selling with the game more widely might induce sceptical assessment.

A prediction? It seems to me highly plausible in principle that EU law would permit some forms of action taken by UEFA against participants in a SuperLeague which are designed to protect the legitimate interests of a governing body with overall responsibility for its sport, subject to meeting the demands of the principle of proportionality. But one needs to be fully aware that competition law, like high level sport, rarely yields a wholly confident prediction. A SuperLeague will be using it too, to argue that it is injecting fresh competition into the market for sports events and that accordingly it should be protected from sanctions. These are difficult legal arguments, for which both legislative texts and precise case law precedents are wanting.

 

What next?

The contempt directed at the owners of the twelve clubs involved in the breakaway has been torrential. Disdain for VAR unites football fans, but that unwelcome intrusion of technology into the frantic pace of a proper football match is a pimple alongside the wrecking ball arrogance of the SuperLeague. The protests appear to have brought the plan unveiled on Monday 19 April 2021 to its knees. The twelve clubs, it seems, will remain within the existing arrangements and play in the existing competitions. But the biggest clubs have not lost their appetite for inducing UEFA to alter the design of the Champions League to suit their interests better. And although this SuperLeague appears to be dead, the threat of the breakaway league in European football remains the creature that will not die.

The legal and regulatory framework is not adequate to meet such challenges. Consider the frantic response to the SuperLeague. UEFA needed to decide what type of sanctions it would impose, doubtless after – urgent – consultations with national associations and FIFA, and perhaps with national governments minded to legislate too. UEFA needed to seek – urgent – advice from the Commission on its view of the impact of EU competition law on proposed sanctions, even if ultimately the authoritative voice on the meaning of EU law belongs to the Court of Justice. And UEFA was already faced by – urgent – applications to national courts on behalf of the SuperLeague 12 seeking to secure orders restraining the imposition of any penalties.

On all these points the law is not clear. EU competition law does not provide a checklist of sanctions which UEFA may lawfully impose and those which go too far. EU law more generally does not regulate directly the structure of governance in European sport. Nor do national laws provide clear controls. Governing bodies in sport have been largely successful in sheltering their autonomy from legal regulation. The SuperLeague fiasco should prompt a re-think. What is UEFA’s autonomy’s worth, when it is revealed to be so vulnerable to the concerted strategies of the biggest clubs? This breakaway failed, but the creature is not dead, and the next version, more skilfully prepared, might succeed.

 

Re-thinking sporting autonomy

In the past UEFA, jealous of its sporting autonomy, frequently called into question the legitimacy of EU intervention. The judgment in Bosman records that UEFA had requested the Court to order a measure of inquiry under its Rules of Procedure in order to obtain fuller information on the role played by transfer fees in the financing of the game, but the Court, noting that UEFA had haplessly failed to submit this request before the close of the oral procedure, refused. Things have changed. UEFA has come to understand the strategic advantage of keeping the EU, most immediately the Commission, onside.

In 2012 a ‘Joint Statement’ by the EU Commissioner then responsible for competition law, Joaquín Almunia, and Michel Platini, then President of UEFA, declared that the ‘break even’ rule at the heart of UEFA’s system of ‘Financial Fair Play’ is based on sound economic principle and that its objectives are consistent with EU state aid policy (IP/12/264). This ‘Joint Statement’ is not legally binding and its analysis lacks depth, but its very existence demonstrates that UEFA, here also reflecting the interests of Europe’s leading football clubs, has succeeded in getting close to the Commission and securing its informal approval. This strategy of co-operation rather than confrontation also marked the reform of the transfer system after Bosman. In March 2001 the Commission declared it had formalized the matter in an exchange of letters between Mario Monti, at the time the Commissioner for Competition, and Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA (IP/01/314). Pending litigation was settled and brought to an end, and the Commission announced closure of its own investigation in June 2002 (IP/02/824). This has no formal status, and, as with FFP, one cannot exclude that a court would take a different view, but for the time being a co-operative solution prevails. Moreover the involvement of FIFA reminds that the effect of EU law is frequently not confined to EU territory alone. The economic centrality of Europe to many, if not all, sports means that in practice the need to adjust practices to comply with EU law sometimes entails that adjustment operates more widely. EU’s norms become global norms. Note too that since 2014 the Commission and UEFA have had a formal arrangement for co-operation.

For present purposes the principal point of interest is that here the governing body, UEFA, has a real and direct interest not in securing autonomy from EU law but rather in using it to defend its existing model of governance and, most of all, its premier club competition, the Champions League. Pursuit of a more intimate relationship with the EU may involve a diminution of autonomy from regulation but it may the best way for UEFA to protect its autonomy from the avaricious might of the biggest clubs. The EU is an imperfect regulator of sport – it lacks expertise, its competence is not comprehensive, and the geographical boundaries of the EU mean nothing to football. But it will be intriguing to observe whether April 2021’s eruption prompts demands for a more assertive EU, able and willing to move beyond the ad hoc application of competition law and to adopt instead a more proactive role, seeking to establish minimum standards of good governance while ruling out sporting competitions which depart from merit-based criteria for admission. It would – and should – be a chance too for the EU to insist on a more serious commitment to re-distribution of wealth within European football. The biggest clubs have induced the transformation of the Champions League into a competition in which only a small pool of clubs may aspire to reach the later stages, let alone win it, and the disproportionate benefits which attach to mere participation in it have wreaked havoc with competitive balance in smaller national leagues across Europe. UEFA needs EU backing to stop these trends, and to reverse them. This would transform the ‘European Model of Sport’ from windy rhetoric and window-dressing to something more concrete and normative.

Consider too national political processes. In the short term had there been a need to stop the SuperLeague by immediate intervention, then it is national political processes which have the power to act with the necessary speed. Legislation could forbid closed Leagues. A higher level of state intervention in sport would be another threat to UEFA’s autonomy, and would likely be accompanied by pressure to reform its governance, yet it would also provide UEFA with a further means to defend its model from the destructive power unleashed by a SuperLeague. So ‘will politics show its teeth and confer a real-sanctioned monopoly to the football pyramid … [as] a transnational public service?’ (Antoine Duval, April 19 2021). After all, tongue in cheek, ‘political interference with sports is only bad if it goes against governing bodies’ objectives’ (Borja García, April 19 2021).

  

Conclusion

Radical change is often generated by moments of crisis, and it could be that the prime movers behind the ‘SuperLeague’ will come to be seen as having provoked a strengthening, not a weakening, of UEFA’s regulatory and commercial profile. This, however, does depend on UEFA, the EU and national politicians seizing the moment, and acting now to reform governance. They should not assume that because the current crisis is over, business as usual will resume. The unsystematic character of EU competition law should serve to focus attention on the need for broader intervention by the EU in order to protect and improve established systems of governance. Faced by the biggest clubs’ plain disdain for matters of fundamental sporting significance in Europe such as merit-based qualification for competitions and open Leagues with promotion and relegation, UEFA may find the EU a helpful ally: so too it may find a higher level of readiness to intervene in sport at state level serves its purposes. A durable accommodation between sporting tradition and commercially-driven innovation is desperately needed, or else fans can gloomily anticipate the emergence of many more malformed creatures. The creature is not dead.

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