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Football’s governing bodies have lost a landmark court case that threatens their hold over the sport in Europe, potentially opening the door for new breakaway competitions across the industry.
The EU’s top court found on Thursday that Uefa, which oversees European football, and the global body Fifa acted unlawfully in threatening to impose sanctions on players and clubs that joined the European Super League in 2021.
The ruling by the EU’s Court of Justice did not suggest that the ESL, an attempted breakaway competition launched by 12 top football clubs, or any other new contest must be approved. But the judges challenged the fundamental powers of Uefa and Fifa, requiring the bodies to ditch “arbitrary” rules and be more open to competition.
In a separate ruling, the ECJ also found that the International Skating Union had acted unlawfully when it threatened to punish athletes seeking to take part in a competition in Dubai that had not been endorsed by the governing body.
Legal experts said the rulings had brought sport firmly within the scope of European competition law, with potentially far-reaching consequences across the sector.
“The organisation of sports competition is no longer under the monopoly of the sports federations,” said Mark Orth, a sports competition lawyer and lecturer. “Athletes and clubs have been given a lot of new opportunities.”
The ESL project would have created a rival to Uefa’s lucrative Champions League, owned and run by a group of elite teams. But it unravelled within days after a fierce backlash from fans, national governments and domestic leagues.
Most of the clubs involved quickly distanced themselves from the ESL but Real Madrid and Barcelona have continued to press their case through the courts, complaining that Fifa, which runs the World Cup, and Uefa operate their own tournaments yet also act as gatekeepers to control any new entrants.
The ESL’s supporters argued that the threats to punish clubs and players by Uefa and Fifa were anti-competitive and therefore contrary to European law. On Thursday, the European Court of Justice sided with the ESL, saying that “rules making any new interclub football project subject to their prior approval . . . are unlawful”.
“There is no framework for the Fifa and Uefa rules ensuring that they are transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate,” it added. “Moreover, given their arbitrary nature, their rules on approval, control and sanctions must be held to be unjustified restrictions on the freedom to provide services.”
Uefa said the ruling was a reflection of an earlier “shortfall” in its own system for authorising other competitions, but that it was “confident” those issues had already been addressed with new regulations that comply with European law.
Clubs, national leagues and fan groups quickly spoke out in support of Uefa, rejecting the idea of a new breakaway tournament.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino said the ECJ’s verdict “does not change anything”. “We have been organising the best competitions in the world and this will also be the case in the future,” he wrote on his Instagram account.
The ruling, which cannot be appealed against, nevertheless opens the door for new entrants to launch rival competitions and threatens to upend the status quo in European football.
Bernd Reichart, chief executive of A22 Sports Management, a company representing the ESL holdouts, declared victory and promised the “beginning of a new era”.
“The Uefa monopoly is over,” Reichart said as he unveiled a new proposal for an alternative pan-European competition.
However, the ECJ noted that its ruling “does not mean” that the ESL or any such rival competition “must necessarily be approved”.
Any attempt at forming a new contest still faces staunch opposition. The UK government, which threatened to drop a “legislative bomb” to prevent English teams taking part when the ESL launched, said after the ruling on Thursday that a new independent football regulator would “stop clubs from joining any similar breakaway competitions in the future”.
The ECJ judges also said that the rules that give Fifa and Uefa exclusive control over media and commercial rights “restrict competition” and are “harmful” to European football clubs and fans by depriving them of “new and potentially innovative or interesting competitions”.
The original ESL proposal would have created a largely closed competition, with 15 top clubs guaranteed to compete every year — rather than the Uefa system that requires teams to qualify through their domestic leagues.
In the meantime, Uefa has set out plans to expand the Champions League, while Fifa is overhauling the Club World Cup.
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