Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 1: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it.
Day 2: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions
Day 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Editor’s note: Finally, the last blog of our
TPO ban Symposium has arrived! Due to unforeseen circumstances, FIFA had to
reconsider presenting its own views on the matter. However, FIFA advised us to
contact Prof. Dr. Christian
Duve to author the eagerly awaited blog on their behalf. Prof. Dr. Christian Duve is a lawyer
and partner with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and an honorary professor
at the University of Heidelberg. He has been a CAS arbitrator until 2014. Thus, as planned, we will conclude
this symposium with a post defending the compatibility of the TPO ban with EU
law. Many thanks to Prof. Dr. Duve for having accepted this last-minute
challenge! More...
Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 1: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it.
Day 2: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions
Day 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.
Editor's note: In this fourth part of our blog symposium on FIFA's TPO ban Daniel Geey shares his 'UK perspective' on the ban. The English Premier League being one of the first leagues to have outlawed TPO in 2010, Daniel will outline the regulatory steps taken to do so and critically assess them. Daniel is an associate in Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP's Competition and EU Regulatory Law Group. As well as being a famous 'football law' twitterer, he has also published numerous articles and blogs on the subject.
What is
Third Party Investment?
In brief
Third Party Investment (TPI) in the football industry, is where a football club
does not own, or is not entitled to, 100% of the future transfer value of a
player that is registered to play for that team. There are numerous models for
third party player agreements but the basic premise is that companies,
businesses and/or individuals provide football clubs or players with money in
return for owning a percentage of a player’s future transfer value. This
transfer value is also commonly referred to as a player’s economic rights.
There are instances where entities will act as speculators by purchasing a
percentage share in a player directly from a club in return for a lump sum that
the club can then use as it wishes. More...
Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 1: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it.
Day 2: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.
Editor’s note: Ariel N. Reck is an Argentine
lawyer specialized in the football industry. He is a guest professor at ISDE’s
Global Executive Master in International Sports Law, at the FIFA CIES Sports
law & Management course (Universidad Católica Argentina) and the Universidad
Austral Sports Law diploma (Argentina) among other prestigious courses. He is a
regular conference speaker and author in the field of sports law.
Being an Argentine lawyer, Ariel will focus on the impact FIFA’s TPO ban
will have (and is already having) on South American football.More...
Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 1: FIFA must regulate TPO, not ban it.
Day 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.
Editor’s note: Raffaele
Poli is a human geographer. Since 2002, he has studied the labour and transfer
markets of football players. Within the context of his PhD thesis
on the transfer networks of African footballers, he set up the CIES Football Observatory based
at the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) located in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland. Since 2005, this research group
develops original research in the area of football from a multidisciplinary
perspective combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Raffaele was also involved in a recent study on TPO providing FIFA with more background information on its functioning and regulation (the executive summary is available here).
This is the third blog of our Symposium
on FIFA’s TPO ban, it is meant to provide an interdisciplinary view on the
question. Therefore, it will venture beyond the purely legal aspects of the ban
to introduce its social, political and economical context and the related
challenges it faces. More...
Introduction: FIFA’s TPO ban and its compatibility with EU competition law.
Day 2: Third-party entitlement to shares of transfer fees: problems and solutions
Day 3: The Impact of the TPO Ban on South American Football.
Day 4: Third Party Investment from a UK Perspective.
Day 5: Why FIFA's TPO ban is justified.
Editor's note: This is the first blog of our symposium on FIFA's TPO ban, it features the position of La Liga regarding the ban and especially highlights some alternative regulatory measures it would favour. La Liga has launched a complaint in front of the European Commission challenging the compatibility of the ban with EU law, its ability to show that realistic less restrictive alternatives were available is key to winning this challenge. We wish to thank La Liga for sharing its legal (and political) analysis of FIFA's TPO ban with us.
INTRODUCTION
The Spanish Football League (La Liga) has argued for months that the funding of clubs through the conveyance of part of players' economic rights (TPO) is a useful practice for clubs. However, it also recognized that the
practice must be strictly regulated. In July 2014, it approved a provisional regulation that was sent to many of the relevant stakeholders, including FIFA’s Legal Affe Netherlands and works as Research Officer for the Centre for Sports and
Human Rights. 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 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.
On November
26th, the Human Rights Advisory Board[1]
of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) published its second report. This blog provides a summary and brief
evaluation of the report, by drawing a comparison to the previous report issued by the Human Rights Advisory
Board (hereinafter: the Board) based on the content of the recommendations and
FIFA’s efforts to implement the Board’s recommendations. The third part of this
blog briefly reflects on the broader implications of some of the new
recommendations issued for FIFA’s internal policies. The conclusion provides
five more general points of observation on the report. More...
Editor’s note: Sven Demeulemeester and Niels Verborgh
are sports lawyers at the Belgium law firm, Altius.
Introduction
In its
16 November 2018 judgment, the Court of Justice of the
European Free Trade Association States (the EFTA Court) delivered its eagerly
awaited ruling in the case involving Henrik Kristoffersen and the Norwegian Ski
Federation (NSF).
On 17 October
2016, Kristoffersen had taken the NSF to the Oslo District Court over the
latter’s refusal to let the renowned alpine skier enter into a sponsorship with
Red Bull. At stake were the commercial markings on his helmet and headgear in
races organised under the NSF’s umbrella. The NSF refused this sponsorship because
it had already granted the advertising on helmet and headgear to its own main
sponsor, Telenor. Kristoffersen claimed before the Oslo District Court, that the
NSF should be ordered to permit him to enter into an individual marketing
contract with Red Bull. In the alternative, Kristoffersen claimed damages up to
a maximum of NOK 15 million. By a letter of 25
September 2017, the Oslo District Court referred several legal questions to the
EFTA Court in view of shedding light on the compatibility of the rules that the
NSF had invoked with EEA law.
If rules do not relate to the conduct of the
sport itself, but concern sponsorship rights and hence an economic activity,
these rules are subject to EEA law. The EFTA Court ruling is important in that
it sets out the framework for dealing with - ever more frequent - cases in
which an individual athlete’s endorsement deals conflict with the interest of
the national or international sports governing bodies (SGBs) that he or she
represents in international competitions.More...