Forty-eight hours that lasted four years
What the Court of Justice of the EU actually held in Case C-333/21, European Superleague Company SL v FIFA and UEFA
In April 2021, twelve of Europe's most powerful football clubs announced a new competition and retreated within forty-eight hours. In October 2025, a Spanish appellate court confirmed that the retreat had been brought about in breach of European Union competition law.
Between those two points stands the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 21 December 2023, Grand Chamber, in Case C-333/21 (ECLI:EU:C:2023:1011). Few judgments have been discussed as widely, and fewer still have been misread as consistently. It did not approve the Super League. It did not abolish UEFA. It did not declare prior-approval systems for sporting competitions unlawful. It did something less spectacular and far more durable: it imposed legal discipline on a private power that had for decades been exercised without measurable limits.
This is the first of a three parts article. Here I examine the judgment itself. The second part will explain why the standard it establishes reaches every international sports federation, from figure skating and basketball to combat sports. Finally, part three will explain why it reaches standard-setting bodies, digital platforms and private certification schemes just as directly — that is, the commercial world well beyond the stadium.
The question was not the one we assumed.
The Court was never asked whether the Super League was permissible. European Superleague Company SL, a company incorporated under Spanish law, had brought proceedings before Commercial Court No. 17 in Madrid. That court stayed the proceedings and made a reference for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU, framed in entirely different terms:
May a private body reserve to itself the power to decide who enters a market, when that same body is commercially active in that market and stands to gain from exclusion?
Put that way, the question ceases to be about sport.
Why a sports federation is an “undertaking”
FIFA and UEFA are associations governed by Swiss law. That did not place them beyond the reach of EU law: what matters is not where a body is seated, but where the effects of its conduct are produced.
The Court treated them in a dual capacity. They are undertaking because they organize market competitions and exploit the related rights — and therefore fall within Article 102 TFEU. They are simultaneously associations of undertakings, because their members, the national federations and through them the clubs, themselves carry on economic activity — and therefore their decisions fall within Article 101 TFEU. The relevant market was defined as the organization and marketing of interclub football competitions within EU territory, together with the exploitation of the rights connected with them.
Once that dual role is recognized, the problem becomes visible to the naked eye: the same body writes the rules of entry and competes against those seeking to enter.
Five holdings that must be read together
(1) Article 102 TFEU: the adoption and application of rules on prior approval, participation and sanctions constitutes an abuse of a dominant position where those rules are not subject to substantive criteria and procedural safeguards ensuring that they are transparent, objective, precise, non-discriminatory and proportionate.
(2) Article 101(1): the same rules amount to a decision by an association of undertakings restricting competition by object.
(3) Here lies the hard core of the judgment — that characterization carries a heavy consequence. The case law had offered an escape route, familiar from Wouters and Meca-Medina: restrictive rules could fall outside Article 101 where they pursued legitimate objectives and were inherent in and proportionate to them.
The Court closed that route for restrictions by object. Two exits remain, both narrow: the four cumulative conditions of Article 101(3), and objective justification under Article 102. The burden of proof lies with the federation.
(4) The rules on exclusive exploitation of commercial and media rights were treated separately. The Court accepted that they may restrict competition but held that they may nonetheless qualify for exemption or justification, that assessment being for the national court. Central marketing of rights was not condemned — a point routinely omitted from public debate.
(5) Article 56 TFEU: the same body of rules constitutes an unjustified restriction on the freedom to provide services.
The specificity of sport is not immunity
Article 165 TFEU recognizes the specific nature of sport. The Court accepted that objectives such as sporting merit, the open character of competitions and equality of opportunity are legitimate. It refused, however, to treat Article 165 as a cross-cutting derogation clause. The specificity of sport is weighed within competition law; it is not a door out of it.
The Advocate General had proposed the opposite
In December 2022, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos reached a materially different conclusion, accepting the compatibility of a prior-approval system and attaching considerable weight to Article 165 and to the European Sports Model. The Court departed from him.
That divergence matters. It shows the outcome was not self-evident, and it gives the precise measure of what was decided: not that the pyramidal organization of sport is objectionable, but that its power requires limits set out in advance and reviewable after the fact.
What happened next
The case returned to Madrid. In May 2024, Commercial Court No. 17 found for the claimant, ordering the cessation of the practices and the removal of their effects. On 29 October 2025, the Audiencia Provincial of Madrid dismissed in their entirety the appeals of UEFA, LaLiga and the Spanish federation, with costs; FIFA took no part in the appeal, having been in default at first instance.
An appeal on a point of law to the Tribunal Supremo remains available, while damages claims are already being brought. UEFA, for its part, maintains that its authorization rules adopted in 2022 and updated in 2024 remain in force.
In other words, the dispute has not closed. It has moved from whether there was an infringement to what that infringement costs.
Three points to take away
● A dominant position is not unlawful; unfettered discretion is.
● The autonomy of sport is not immunity from competition law.
● Criteria must be not merely objective but known in advance.
The third is, in practice, the most dangerous for any federation. It is also where part two begins.
Konstantinos Karipidis, Lawyer
LLM International Commercial Law
ISO 9001 & 19001 Lead Auditor
This is an excerpt from the relevant analyses of the signatory's personal file; it is general information and does not constitute legal advice. The sources used are referred to in the original text.
