BRUSSELS — The EU’s influential competition regulators have taken on some of the planet’s most powerful companies, from Google to Gazprom. But they are steering clear of opening a case against the world soccer governing body, FIFA. A complaint lodged by the European Leagues professional soccer association in October 2024 accused FIFA of abusing its dominant position by imposing its international match calendar on other sporting stakeholders.
It argued that FIFA’s dual role as a governing body and the organizer of its own competitions creates a conflict of interest, through which it enriches itself. The leagues broadened the complaint last month to cover the women’s game — but the Commission has yet to open formal proceedings. Brussels has left the European Leagues complaint in the “freezer,” one senior EU official with knowledge of the file told POLITICO.
The episode underscores the Directorate-General for Competition’s long-running reluctance to open investigations into sports federations, which current and former European officials say is due to sport's special status in EU law — the treaties recognize its social and educational role — but also a deliberate policy choice to swerve potentially controversial cases in an emotionally charged sector. Now, pressure is building against the competition department over the languishing European Leagues complaint, after a cross-party group of EU lawmakers urged the Commission to use its antitrust powers to rein in FIFA. In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, obtained by POLITICO and copied to competition chief Teresa Ribera, MEPs called for action.
Bruno Gonçalves and Hannes Heide (both from the Socialists and Democrats) and Bogdan Zdrojewski (from the conservative European People’s Party) asked the Commission to take formal action, including in relation to the complaint lodged by the European Leagues, which represents 53 men’s and women’s professional football leagues across the continent. The MEPs say the governing body’s application of the calendar “raises concerns about FIFA’s use of regulatory powers to advance FIFA’s own commercial interests,” and that those powers “must be exercised through transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate procedures, with effective safeguards against conflicts of interest.” The EU’s top court set that test for sports bodies in its landmark 2023 Super League ruling. Over the last 15 years, Brussels has opened blockbuster investigations into Gazprom’s behavior in Central and Eastern European gas markets; whether Google illegitimately hindered the development and market access of rival mobile operating systems; and Apple’s rules for app developers.
But the Commission’s caution on sports is long-standing. When then-competition chief Margrethe Vestager ordered the International Skating Union in 2017 to drop rules threatening speed skaters with lifetime bans for joining money-spinning rival events, she said the decision didn’t mean the Commission was “trying to be the referee in every dispute about sport.” Many disputes, from doping penalties to deciding the precise scheduling of games, have “little or nothing at all to do with competition rules,” Vestager said at the time. National courts and competition authorities, she added, are “usually well placed to deal with competition disputes involving a sport federation.” Those principles have since come to guide how the Commission’s competition department decides which sports disputes to take on.
There is no shortage of candidates, with controversies in sports including tennis, padel and sailing, as well as soccer. Any investigation would test recent case law. A pair of July rulings on FIFA’s agent rules went largely the governing body’s way.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
