EU Policy. Super League v UEFA: What’s next?

Counter to the thrust of headlines surrounding today’s finding by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on UEFA and FIFA, the Court stressed that its finding did not constitute an endorsement of the Super League project.

“The Court confirmed that this has never been a case about Super League but rather about UEFA powers and their extent,” said Miguel Poiares Maduro, Professor of Law at the European University Institute of Florence.

The Court ruled in quite unambiguous terms that UEFA's practices amounted to an abuse of a dominant position.

“There's a clear message by the Court that bodies with regulatory or quasi-regulatory powers are going to be scrutinised – and very closely – under EU competition law,” Pablo Ibáñez Colomo, Jean Monnet chair in competition and regulation at London School of Economics (LSE), told Euronews.

According to Colomo, such strict scrutiny will apply from now on to an authority, a sporting body or even when a group of companies are in a position akin to that of a regulatory body.

“The message from the Court to sport governing bodies was very clear: remember that you’re companies and you’re subject to competition law,” according to competition lawyer Viktoria Tsvetanova, associate in the Dentons competition team.

The ruling seems to re-establish the predominance of competition rules, contradicting exemptions from the antitrust framework for European sports bodies mooted in an opinion of the ECJ Advocate General Athanasios Rantos on the case in December 2022.

Rantos found a special “constitutional recognition” applied to sports through Article 165 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) which refers to the commitment of the bloc to “developing the European dimension in sport, by providing