UEFA Multi-Club Ownership Rules: A Guide

BRATISLAVA. Football players Dunajská Streda won in the playoffs to participate in the conference league, but they are most likely not playing it.

The European Football Union (UEFA) has excluded the club from the competition with respect to the rules that do not allow two clubs with the same owners to start in the same competition.

The DAC appealed against the verdict, but it is unlikely to succeed in the Sports Arbitration Court (time).

How did it start?

The rules on the ownership of several clubs have existed within the UEFA for almost a quarter of a century.

Even the now quoted Article 5 was incorporated into UEFA regulations in 2001. It happened after the UEFA Cup qualified Slavia Prague and AEK Athens. The owners of both teams were the English company ENIC, which also owned Tottenham.

UEFA decided that two clubs that have a common owner in common could not start in the competition. ENIC spent £ 1.3 million to appeal to the Sports Arbitration Court (CAS).

Finally, the clubs could start in the UEFA Cup until the time was carried out by the verdict, but eventually the Arbitration Court confirmed the UEFA decision.

AEK dropped out in the first round and Slavia ended up in the second, so the decision has practically no change.

Red Bull case

The original UEFA rule spoke of “control or influence” in several clubs. In 2017, after two clubs of the Red Bull, Salzburg and Leipzig qualified for the Champions League, it turned into a “decisive influence” in several clubs.

At that time, Salzburg made several changes to meet UEFA requirements. He changed the structure of the Board of Directors, terminated the formal cooperation agreement with Lipzko and reduced the sponsorship visibility of Red Bull.

UEFA concluded that Red Bull did not have a “decisive influence” on the operation of more than one club, so Salzburg and Leipzig could start in the Champions League.

Annual matter

While in the past similar cases have occurred only sporadically, the current situation in international football is such that they are an annual matter.

According to estimates, there will be eight hundred professional clubs in the world by 2030, where the owner owns another football club. At present, there are about four hundred.

For example, before the 2023/2024 season, this was also the case with Aston Villa couples-Vitoria de Guimaraes, Brighton-Union Saint-Gilloise and Toulouse-AC Milan. All the clubs could finally start in the European Cups when their owners made the required changes to make the ownership structure of the clubs to meet UEFA conditions.

Two of the established ways to comply with the UEFA rules are either to reduce the share in one of the clubs-this is how the owner of Brighton Tony Bloom with his Belgian Union Saint-Gilloise club-or transferred one of the clubs to an independent administrator for a certain period so that no individual can impact an impact on two clubs at the same time.

A similar situation was addressed a year ago in connection with Manchester City and Girona. Both clubs belong to the City Football Group and both qualified for the Champions League.

Nice and Manchester United, who played the European League, are in the Ineos Sport portfolio.

However, these interested clubs introduced the necessary changes a year ago to avoid UEFA. Girona and Nice shares were transferred to an independent administrator for a period of 12 months.

Since Girona and Manchester United did not qualify for Europe in the current season, clubs do not have to deal with the situation whether UEFA would accept the extension of this transfer to the next period.

Two excluded clubs

This season has changed the deadline to resolve ownership situations until June moved to March.

For the first time in its history, UEFA has indeed excluded clubs from its competitions, referring to the rule on multiple ownership of clubs.

The first was the Irish team of Droghed United, whose owner, Trivela Group, is also owned by the Danish club Silkeborg.

Drogheda won participation in Europe last November last year by winning the Irish Cup, yet the owner could not resolve the situation to avoid conflict of interest.

The second excluded club is DAC.

Fans speculate that the owner of the club Oszkár Világi, whose daughter Réka Világi is officially owned by the Hungarian club ETO FC Győr, in March he did not even know that Győr can also qualify for Europe.

Balázs Borbélya’s men were closer to the descent zone after the autumn part than to participate in the European Cups, but excellent spring performances provided them with fourth place in the table.

However, the DAC declared in its opinion that he was dealing with the situation before Deadlin.

“The operation of both clubs is provided by separate management and control mechanisms in accordance with strict legal requirements that were introduced before the official UEFA date – 1 March 2025,” said the club, which turned to the Sports Arbitration Court CAS.