The Emerging Battle for Control of Global Football

Abstract

Recently, conflicts between football clubs and the organizations that govern them have intensified. Because of concerns about control over profits and players, a group of high-profile clubs threatened to break away from the Union of European Football Association’s (“UEFA”) Champions League to form a closed European Super League, several foreign clubs and their leagues sought to play league matches in the U.S. over the objection of U.S. Soccer and the International Federation of Football Associations (“FIFA”), and clubs in the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga refused to release their players for World Cup qualifying matches.

While concerning, this tension between clubs and their governing bodies is not a new phenomenon. What potentially makes this quasi-rebellion different from past ones is the changing legal environment. The battle is not between good and evil or between community-minded and greedy; rather, it’s a battle for control of global football. Even with sports’ special status under European law, the power of sports governing bodies is not unlimited and courts have recently acknowledged that governing bodies’ dual role as regulators and commercial participants in a trillion dollar industry can make their attempts to restrict competitors suspect. This paper, written for a symposium on international sports law, argues that if football’s governing bodies fail to take seriously this legal reality, they may be heading for a reckoning.

Keywords: Football clubs, global football, sports, European law, sports regulation, Union of European Football Association, international sports law, antitrust, competition