Euroviews. The European Super League case has woken up a sleeping giant

“Tucked away in the fairy-tale Grand Duchy of Luxembourg”, as a commentator once put it, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is the unsung hero of European integration. 

When it comes to sports, the CJEU is like a sleeping giant. Every three decades, the court will wake up and upend the way we play and enjoy our favourite sports. Then, there will be a period of hibernation until the next eruption. 

The previous shock was on 15 December 1995, when the CJEU adopted the Bosman ruling which reshaped European football — in my personal view, for the worst. 

Twenty-eight years later, on 21 December 2023, we had the next shock. The Court this time delivered a crushing defeat for FIFA and UEFA in the European Super League case.

We also had two more judgments on the same day, Royal Antwerp Football Club and International Skating Union, which completed the picture and that picture is now bleak for sports federations. 

The Court’s rulings will have profound consequences on almost all other sports and their organisation. 

Lots of cases and complaints that are currently pending before the Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) at the European Commission will now acquire momentum — to the horror of the officials — and I am sure there will be a huge wave of new preliminary references on similar questions on every sport you can imagine.

More seriously, what is the European Super League case about? The Court held that the FIFA and UEFA rules making any new interclub football project, such as the Super League, subject to their prior approval, and prohibiting clubs and players from playing in those competitions, are unlawful. 

In essence, the role and powers of FIFA and UEFA are at stake. 

The CJEU thought it needed to check