The corridor of uncertainty: part one, case studies on the legal challenges to the financial regulation of football

Abstract

Legal systems should be certain so that rules can be easily enforced and the law’s subjects can operate with certitude. And yet, in the world of professional football, the legal validity of various regulatory rules governing the financial aspects of professional football has repeatedly been called into question. Legal challenges, ventilated through various national and international fora, call into question the stability of financial rules created by football’s governing bodies and, prima facie, undermine the ability of the game’s rule making bodies to create financial rules which engender the requisite degree of legal certainty. This paper is the first in a two-part series examining the framework within which financial regulatory rules are made and the manifestations of the peculiarities of that framework. This Part One is composed of three case studies on formal legal challenges—to Financial Fair Play, to the prohibition on third party ownership, and aspects of the market in player transfers—each of which involved disputes centred on financial regulatory rules. Part Two of this series will build upon the themes identified in Part One. Considering the structural factors underlying the legal challenges described. It will be argued that a confluence of factors have put football’s governing bodies in a ‘Corridor of Uncertainty’ in respect of their ability to regulate the financial aspects of the game. In this ‘Corridor of Uncertainty’, governing bodies’ financial rules are inexorably prone to legal challenges to which a legal, political or regulatory response must be produced.