The verdict has been announced in Manchester City’s legal case against the Premier League over the league’s rules on commercial deals involving clubs’ owners.
City, who are owned by the Abu Dhabi-backed City Football Group, had some complaints upheld, with two aspects of the associated party transaction (APT) rules deemed unlawful by a tribunal.
But the Premier League says the tribunal rejected the majority of Manchester City’s challenges and “endorsed the overall objectives, framework and decision-making of the APT system”.
Simon Leaf, Partner and head of sport at Mishcon de Reya, told BBC Sport: “On the one hand whilst the decision today will be embarrassing for the Premier League, because in a couple of narrow areas their rules have been found to be unlawful, generally speaking the decision confirms that the vast majority of the APT rules are indeed lawful and therefore whilst we can expect to see some changes to the rules going forwards, on the whole this isn’t a resounding victory for Manchester City by any stretch of the imagination.”
Yasin Patel, a barrister practising sports law at Church Court Chambers, told the BBC: “In short, Manchester City haven’t got exactly what they want here, but nonetheless they have changed some of the areas and given a bloody nose to the Premier League. And vice-versa the Premier League haven’t had everything they want, but I think they’ll be more relieved here this evening because the last thing they would have wanted is the tribunal to come back with even more changes to be implemented.”
BBC Sport’s chief football news reporter Simon Stone said: “The Premier League feels it is ok after this latest decision because of the number of allegations dismissed but it remains to be seen whether their calm reaction is justified.
“The fierce manner in which City have responded to the verdict, allied to the knowledge they are currently fighting the substantive issue of 115 financial charges, which they deny but if found to have breached will be seismic, suggests they have spotted a weakness in the Premier League’s regulations and will look to exploit it as far as they can.”
Read more on the tribunal here
