New Delhi: Eight-time Premier League Champions Manchester City have recorded a significant victory in their battle with the very league they compete in. In a verdict that will send shockwaves through the footballing world, a panel of retired judges ruled that the Premier League’s rules, which prevents clubs from inflating deals with companies that are linked to their owners, are in breach of the Competition Act. They also said that the top flight was wrong to stop two recent deals that Manchester City were trying to make.
The club are currently involved in another legal battle against the Premier League, where they face a whopping 115 charges of breaching the league’s financial rules, which is separate to this case. They took the league to court earlier in the year and claimed that the rule was made after the Saudi-led takeover of fellow Premier League side Newcastle United and was amended in February 2024, which the club saw as unfair.
The league’s system on Associated Party Transactions, or APTs, was deemed unlawful by the panel for a number of reasons, one of which was the fact that these rules aren’t applicable to the loans which clubs take from their owners and shareholders. The £4 billion that are borrowed across the top-flight, £1.5 billion of it comes from shareholder loans, that includes all of Arsenal’s £250m borrowings and almost all of Brighton’s. If the rules are to change following this verdict, it would affect all clubs across the English top-flight.
🚨🔵 Manchester City statement confirm legal win over Premier League after the governing commercial deals between clubs and related companies were declared unlawful. pic.twitter.com/ThWGMequZT
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) October 7, 2024
Manchester City argued that the loans from owners and shareholders were unfair and mostly not at market value because they are offered at either zero or no interest and there’s no burden of repayment. They said if the commercial rates are applied and those figures included in every club’s profit and sustainability accounts, many teams would find themselves breaching the financial regulations, some that the league won’t want. This ruling could open the door for clubs to sign significantly higher deals with related parties.
While the ruling has been announced and reported to the clubs this afternoon by the panel, it’s still not clear what its repercussions might be. Manchester City are expected to look for damages and the Premier League is expected to have to either scrap or change it’s rules. This also opens the door for other clubs to seek damages if they were harmed by this now unlawful rule.
Which two Manchester City deals were rejected by the Premier League?
Man City have defeated the Premier League!
They “unfairly blocked” from agreeing 2 huge sponsorship deals with Etihad and First Abu Dhabi Bank earlier this year, according to the official verdict
It has now emerged in the 175-page report that 8 PL rivals actually gave evidence… pic.twitter.com/lIOadwCEKF
— Betfair (@Betfair) October 7, 2024
The Premier League stopped two deals that the club was trying to make last year and the panel declared that the league was wrong to prevent both those deals. The first one was a wide-ranging sponsorship deal that the club had with Etihad Airways which was rejected and another was a deal with a bank based in Abu Dhabi that was also rejected by the Premier League of England.
Being involved in a much larger legal battle against the Premier League, the club has an expensive legal team helping them fight cases, which is led by Lord Pannick, who launched a lot of claims against the APT rules. Their arguments claimed that these rules were designed to end Manchester City’s unparalleled success in recent years and called them a result of the ‘tyranny of the majority’. While not all of their claims were accepted, they came out victorious in seven key arguments.
The panel consisted of Sir Nigel Teare(a retired High Court judge), Christopher Vajda KC(a former judge of the European Court of Justice) and Lord Dyson, former Justice of the Supreme Court. They called the denial of the Etihad deal ‘procedurally unfair’ and said that it ‘must be set aside’ because the club didn’t get an opportunity to respond to the league’s analysis before reaching it’s decision. They even branded the Abu Dhabi bank deal unfair because Manchester City weren’t given any details of the transactions of other clubs the league referred in the final decision.
In a huge off the field win for Premier League champions Manchester City in their battle against the Premier League, the English top flight’s sponsorship rules have been declared unlawful. Football Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
