| Abstract: |
The competition rules and policy framework of the European Union represents an
important institutional restriction for doing sports business. Driven by the
courts, the 2007 overhaul of the approach and methodology has increased the
scope of competition policy towards sports associations and clubs. Nowadays,
virtually all activities of sports associations that govern and organize a
sports discipline with business elements are subject to antitrust rules. This
includes genuine sporting rules that are essential for a league, championship
or tourna-ment to come into existence. Of course, ‘real’ business or
commercial activities like ticket selling, marketing of broadcasting rights,
etc. also have to comply with competition rules. Regulatory activities of
sports associations comply with European competition rules if they pursuit a
legitimate objective, its restrictive effects are inherent to that objective
and proportionate to it. This new approach offers important orientation for
the strategy choice of sports associations, clubs and related enterprises.
Since this assessment is done following a case-by-case approach, however,
neither a blacklist of anticompetitive nor a whitelist of procompetitive
sporting rules can be derived. Instead, conclusions can be drawn only from the
existing case decisions – but, unfortunately, this leaves many aspects open.
With respect to business activities, the focus of European competition policy
is on centralized marketing arrangements bundling media rights. These
constitute cartels and are viewed to be anticompetitive in nature. However,
they may be exempted from the cartel prohibition on efficiency and consumer
benefits considerations. Here, a detailed list of conditions exists that
centralized marketing arrangements must comply with in order to be legal.
Although this policy seems to be well-developed at first sight, a closer look
at the decision practice reveals several open problems. Other areas of the
buying and selling behavior of sports associations and related enterprises are
considerably less well-developed and do not provide much orientation for
business. The author would like to thank Arne Feddersen and the participants
of the 2nd European Conference on Sports Economics (German Sports University
Co-logne, 2010) for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. |