Sport’s Specific Nature, an Excuse for Anti-Competitive Agreement and Abuse of Dominance

Abstract: The development of sports within the European Union (EU) has been blooming the latest century, especially in the football sector, which has been transformed into a multi-billion industry. The development of European football has attracted investors outside the EU into heavy investing in football clubs across Europe. This has enabled purchases of new talents and high profile players for astronomical transfer fees in order to gain a competitive edge. Before the adoption of financial fair play (FFP) in 2009, UEFA, the governing body of European football, lacked rules regarding football clubs expenditures. This resulted in financial problems for some clubs spending more money than they earned. The introduction of FFP enforced by the UEFA has proven to successfully improve the financial state of football clubs across Europe. However, football clubs across the EU are continually breaching FFP, most recently in France and England, which sparked the interest of the author to research within this field. Ever since the introduction of FFP in 2009 there has been previous breaches of FFP in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Bulgaria. The breaches have affected European football in several Member States (MS). This thesis seeks to understand the interplay between FFP enforced by UEFA and EU competition law, but also to explore if football clubs may be subject to article 102 TFEU. Due to multiple breaches of FFP it seems that the consequences of the breach are insufficient, whereas an alternative could be the application of article 102 TFEU. Consequences of breaching article 102 TFEU could be more effective to solve the inequalities which European football competition currently experience. Another potential solution would be to alter or maybe abolishing the break-even requirements connected to revenue and spending. This paper will explore the benefits and disadvantages of FFP, but also if FFP could potentially create an oligopoly of dominant actors in professional European Football abusing their dominant position.