Teams Shun European Super League Despite Shock Court Victory
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Plans for a European Super League bringing together elite football clubs such as Real Madrid and FC Barcelona won a surprise boost at the European Union’s top court after judges ruled the sport’s main governing bodies violated antitrust law by thwarting the project.
UEFA and FIFA are “abusing a dominant position” by applying arbitrary rules on approval, control and sanctions, the EU’s Court of Justice said in a binding ruling on Thursday. The victory follows a judgment at the beginning of the year from a Spanish tribunal that warned them not to interfere in preparations for a breakaway.
Despite the rulings, it’s unlikely that any new league will materialize in the short term, with clubs across Europe including Manchester United and Bayern Munich swiftly releasing statements that they had no intention of breaking away from UEFA, organizer of the Champions League and other tournaments.
The European Super League, which initially involved six leading teams from England, three from Italy and three from Spain, crumbled in 2021, just days after its creation, following a public uproar, as well as threats from World Cup organizer FIFA and European counterpart UEFA that any player or club taking part would be expelled from their competitions. The collapse was inevitable after all the English clubs involved pulled out of the project, followed by Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan and AC Milan.
Immediately after today’s ruling, A22 Sports Management, the company behind the rebel league, unveiled ambitious new plans for midweek competitions for 64 men’s teams and 32 women’s clubs across Europe. It said participation would be based on sporting merit with promotion and relegation and no permanent members.
The proposal would include “the world’s leading direct-to-fan sports streaming platform, where billions of fans would be able to watch live all Super League matches for free.”
“We have won the right to compete. The UEFA monopoly is over,” said A22 chief executive officer Bernd Reichart. “Clubs are now free from the threat of sanctions and free to determine their own futures.”
FC Barcelona said the judgment “paves the way for a new elite level football competition in Europe by opposing the monopoly over the football world” and said it “wishes to initiate new discussions as to the path that European competitions should take in the future.”
Battle Continues
Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez said the ruling heralded a “new era” where clubs can act “without threats, without acting against anything or anyone” with the aim of “innovating and modernizing soccer to continue to feed the passion of the fans.”
But while attacking the behavior of the football federations and their abuse of power, the EU court said it still wasn’t a given that the Super League must be approved.
“The court, having been asked generally about the FIFA and UEFA rules, does not rule on that specific project in its judgment,” it said in its statement. “Given their arbitrary nature, their rules on approval, control and sanctions must be held to be unjustified restrictions on the freedom to provide services,” it added.
Switzerland-based UEFA pointed to this in its statement that the ruling “does not signify an endorsement or validation” of the Super League plan. “It rather underscores a pre-existing shortfall within UEFA’s pre-authorization framework, a technical aspect that has already been acknowledged and addressed in June 2022,” the federation said.
Its president Aleksander Ceferin told journalists during a press conference on Thursday that UEFA’s is confident its “new rules are fully in line with the ECJ’s judgment” but that it “will of course review” and see “after reading the verdict if we need to change or add anything else.”
UEFA has never before and “will not try to stop” A22’s project and “I said publicly many times, they can create whatever they want,” Ceferin told journalists. “I hope that they start their fantastic competition as soon as possible, with two clubs. I hope they know what they’re doing, which I’m not so sure about.”
The ruling was part of a trio of sports cases at the Luxembourg-based tribunal that all cast doubt on the ability of governing bodies to dictate how individual athletes and teams operate.
UEFA bylaws aimed at encouraging locally trained young talent could also violate EU competition rules, EU judges ruled in a second sports case on Thursday. The decision is in line with the opinion of a court adviser who said earlier this year the rules may be unfairly allowing top clubs to snap up the best players in their region.
The court said it’s up to national tribunals to rule on the specifics of this case.
Winter Olympics
In yet another setback for sports governing bodies, EU judges on Thursday rejected a challenge by the International Skating Union of EU regulators who found that the union’s threat to ban a pair of Dutch speed skaters from the Winter Olympics for taking part in unauthorized events, violated antitrust rules.
The dispute was sparked by the federation’s threat to ban a pair of Dutch speed skaters from the Winter Olympics for taking part in unauthorized events. The court said that the union’s rules give it “a clear advantage over its competitors and have unfavorable effects for athletes as well as consumers and broadcast audiences.”
In recent decades, the business of sport has grown exponentially in the UK and Europe, said Andre Pretorius, a lawyer with Herbert Smith Freehills. The rulings show “that the governance frameworks for some sports may not have kept pace with these developments” and “this is likely to have negatively impacted clubs, sporting competitors and fans by preventing the emergence of new and innovative competitions.”
The cases are: C-333/21 European Superleague Company; C-124/21 P International Skating Union v. Commission, C-680/21 Royal Antwerp Football Club.
–With assistance from Hugo Miller.
(Updates with club statements in third paragraph. An earlier version of the story corrected a typo on UEFA’s location.)
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