“We have won the right to exist. UEFA’s monopoly is over. Football is free. » It is with these grandiloquent words that the CEO of A22, Bernd Reichart, welcomed this Thursday the judgment rendered by the European Court of Justice in the dispute between the creators of the Super Football League, including its company is a promoter, at UEFA and Fifa.
An important judgment in an extremely complex matter, which was immediately perceived as a snub for the historic institutions of European and world football and as a synonym, for some, of an imminent resurrection of this project which had already been welcomed by a gigantic outcry in April 2021. It is, obviously, not that simple. We summarize everything for you in five minutes, top time.
What does the CJEU ruling say?
In a very summary manner, this judgment answered a certain number of questions from the Madrid Commercial Court, including the legality of the threats made by UEFA and to Fifa to legislate to exclude players and clubs who would support the project dissident from “Super League”, submitted in 2021, from their competitions.
These rules, concluded the CJEU, “violate Union law” because “the organization of football competitions (…) and the exploitation of media rights are, obviously, economic activities” which “must therefore respect competition rules as well as freedom of movement.”
“It’s a bit of a surprise,” analyzes Nicolas Sfez, associate lawyer in EU law and competition law at Spring Legal. This is a fairly innovative decision and, in my opinion, very educational: it does not give concrete solutions, but explains well the different criteria for applying European competition law. »
Is this the triumphant return of the Super League?
It is more complicated than that. In its press release then especially in its full report, 50 pages long, the CJEU puts the brakes on this subject and immediately specifies that “a competition such as the Super League project must not necessarily be authorized”. “It refers quite explicitly to the Spanish commercial court, which had asked the preliminary question, the task of ruling definitively on the legality of the Super League,” declines Sfez. However, this decision is rather in his favor. »
The main clubs which carried the Super League project (Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Juventus Turin) quickly reacted in triumph after the publication of this judgment and a few hours later, its promoter A22 organized a major presentation of its new project -look for Super League 2.0.
However, the full text published by the CJEU does not put an effective end to the monopoly exercised by UEFA and FIFA on the organization of competitions, it simply subjects it to supervision “by material criteria as well as by procedural modalities to ensure its transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate nature. As lawyer Pierre Barthélémy summarizes on X: “UEFA and FIFA retain their monopoly to the extent that they can demonstrate that they respect the requirements of European law to benefit from this exemption”.
What will happen now?
The reactions have already been numerous, both on the CJEU ruling itself and on the announcements which followed from A22 or the positions taken, for or against the Super League of different players in European and world football. It is now up to the Madrid Commercial Court to decide on the legality, or not, of this competition, which is in fact still very far from seeing the light of day.
“If everything happens as it should for the promoter A22, the decision of the commercial court would say that UEFA’s position is illegal, would authorize the creation of the competition and they would do it,” declines Nicolas Sfez. But there are still many criteria other than this which will come into play, in particular on the effectiveness of the creation of such a competition, its interest, and the economic issues. Given the financial issues, we still ask ourselves questions. This initiative could be a way for the big European clubs to twist the arm of UEFA for a better method of distributing TV rights and more attractive financial guarantees and more certain income. »
