Europe’s top court ruled on Thursday that moves by football governing bodies UEFA and FIFA to stifle the creation of a rival Super League had broken EU law.
“The FIFA and UEFA rules making any new interclub football project subject to their prior approval, such as the Super League, and prohibiting clubs and players from playing in those competitions, are unlawful,” the European Court of Justice ruled.
The summary of the written judgment stressed that its ruling doesn’t necessarily mean that the Super League project should now be authorised, just that FIFA and UEFA have been “abusing a dominant position” in the football market.
A22 Sports, the company promoting the Super League project, claimed victory.
“We have won the right to compete. The UEFA monopoly is over. Football is free,” the firm’s CEO Bernd Reichart declared in a social media post from the A22 account.
An initial 12 clubs — the Premier League’s Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, LaLiga’s Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid and Serie A’s AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus — signed up as members of the breakaway Super League for its launch on April 18, 2021, in a move that stunned the football world.
The project, led by Real Madrid’s Florentino Perez and Juventus’ Andrea Agnelli, was born of frustration at UEFA’s dominant role as Champions League organisers, and unhappiness at the competition’s format and revenue model.