Man City and Premier League Both Win Legal Battle

Manchester City and the Premier League have both declared victory on Monday as the champions challenged the English top flight’s rules on commercial deals. Man City Wins Court Desicion Against Premier League Over Commercial Deal Rules.

City sued the rules on associated party transactions at the start of this year on grounds they were anti-competitive. The APT rules are in place to make sure that commercial deals involving entities linked with the club owners are at market value. The case is separate from an ongoing hearing involving City, which is fighting 115 charges relating to alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules.

The Premier League said on Monday that City were “unsuccessful in the majority of (their) challenge” and that the tribunal considering the case had determined the APT rules were necessary and pursued a legitimate objective. But City have issued a statement confirming that the tribunal had stated the APT rules were “unlawful” and the league had breached a dominant position under competition law.

Premier League considered that the tribunal had upheld the legality of the regulations and found them necessary to make PSR work.”. It said that the tribunal was satisfied that any transaction that was clearly not at fair market value would therefore distort competition in the league.

The league also said the panel had rejected City’s argument that the purpose of the rules were to discriminate against clubs with ownership from the Gulf region. The Premier League added that the panel found in favour of City in “two respects only”, namely that shareholder loans should not be excluded from APT rules and a “limited number of amendments” to the APT rules which had been made earlier should not be retained.

Manchester City said the panel found that the APT rules were “structurally unfair” and that it had set aside specific Premier League decisions to restate the fair market value of two transactions entered into by the club.