Man City welcome sponsorship and commercial deals ruling by tribunal

Manchester City welcomed the decision by an arbitration panel in their legal challenge to the Premier League's rules on commercial deals.

City launched a legal action against the associated party transaction (APT) rules earlier this year on the grounds they were anti-competitive.

The APT rules are designed to ensure commercial deals with entities linked to a club's owners are conducted fairly.

City released a statement saying the tribunal had declared the APT rules “unlawful”.

“Manchester City Football Club thanks the distinguished members of the Arbitral Tribunal for their work and considerations and welcomes their findings. The Club has succeeded with its claim: the Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules have been found to be unlawful and the Premier League’s decisions on two specific MCFC sponsorship transactions have been set aside,” a Manchester City statement read.

Elaborating on the findings of the panel, City said that “the tribunal found that both the original APT rules and the current, (amended) APT Rules violate UK competition law and violate the requirements of procedural fairness. The Premier League was found to have abused its dominant position.

“The tribunal has determined both that the rules are structurally unfair and that the Premier League was specifically unfair in how it applied those rules to the Club in practice.

“The rules were found to be discriminatory in how they operate, because they deliberately excluded shareholder loans.

“The tribunal held that the Premier League had reached the decisions in a procedurally unfair manner.

“The tribunal also ruled that there was an unreasonable delay in the Premier League’s fair market value assessment of two of the Club’s sponsorship transactions, and so the Premier League breached its own rules.”

Meanwhile, the Premier League said the panel found in favour of City in “two respects only” – that shareholder loans should not be excluded from APT rules and that a “limited number of amendments” to the APT rules made earlier in this year would be necessary.

This case is separate from the one regarding alleged breaches of financial fair play.

City were referred to an independent commission by the league in February last year over alleged breaches of top-flight financial rules. The club stand accused of 80 breaches of financial rules between 2009 and 2018, plus a further 35 of failing to co-operate with a Premier League investigation. The club strongly deny all charges.