Jack Phillips

Manchester City v The Premier League   Today we have finally been able to read the written reasons in the MCFC v PL arbitration about the legality of the PL’s Associated Party Transaction Rules (‘APT’) and their application.   As is often the case with lawyers, both sides have declared victory. The truth is somewhere in between, with each side winning on different issues. The fact, however, that parts of the PL’s APT Rules have been declared unlawful is significant. Just a few days after the European Court found parts of FIFA’s RSTP were unlawful, and coming not long after the ESL case in Europe (finding FIFA and UEFA rules to be unlawful), and the decision of an FA Rule Arbitral Tribunal that The FIFA and FA’s cap on football agents fees was unlawful, the case represents another example of the increasing tendency of courts and tribunals to hold sports regulators to closer scrutiny than has previously been the case the – in particular where economic activity is involved and where issues of freedom of movement and competition law arise. In addition, some of MCFC’s ‘wins’ in the APT case were based on English public law principles of procedural fairness.   I have been inundated with media requests to discuss the decision, which I must decline, and say no more than I do here for now. Many of the clients I advise will have various issues and interests that will arise from the decision, so it would be inappropriate for me to speak about it now, or express my own opinion.   All that I can say is we are living in the most exciting time for sports law. I have never myself been one to celebrate the greater commercialisation and therefore legalisation of sport and its regulation, but it is a real fact of life and economic activity, such that this tendency for greater scrutiny of sports regulation is inevitable.   It does perhaps also lend further support to the calls for greater independence, and transparency, in the regulation of sport.