By Simon Bianchi, Trainee Lawyer at Tavernier Tschanz, Geneva
Over the last few years, third-party ownership of soccer players (“TPO”) has become controversial. TPO is a mechanism through which a soccer club assigns a player’s economic rights, including the right to benefit from transfer fees every time the player is transferred to another club, to third-party investors in return for a financial counterpart. Considering that TPO threatens the integrity of sporting competitions, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (“FIFA”) eventually banned TPO in 2015. On 20 February 2018, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court rendered decision 4A_260/2017 addressing two important legal issues in this context: (i) the legality of the prohibition of TPO and (ii) the independence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (the “CAS”) towards FIFA. In this decision, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the Belgian club RFC Seraing against a CAS award confirming the validity under European and Swiss law of Articles 18bis and 18ter of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (“RSTP”), which prohibit TPO agreements.
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