Tag: competition law
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Competition law in sports: it’s time to talk about merger control
When the US hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1994, it was said to have spent $500 million on the tournament. Fast forward to 2022, Qatar reportedly spent a whopping $220 billion. Sport is now “big business” . . . and being big business means competition law scrutiny. There are three main fields of competition…
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AG Opinion in FIFA v BZ – Further competition trouble for football rules
Most professional football transfers happen when a player is free to leave because their contract expires, or when current club, player, and new club come to a mutual transfer agreement. But the world is not perfect. Situations arise where a player does not live up to expectations or does not feature in the manager’s plans.…
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Royal Antwerp – Breaking new ground in antitrust in labour markets
To ensure a steady supply of football talent, professional football clubs must do their bit to invest in grassroots football. To incentivise this investment, UEFA and several national football associations introduced “home-grown player rules”, which dictate that a minimum number of players on the match sheet must be home-grown. However, a player, supported by Royal…
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Three/O2 – EU merger control test clarified? (And lions in Regent’s Park)
“Formalistic”, “reductionist”, “selective and unbalanced or even deficient”. Advocate General Juliane Kokott did not mince her words in last week’s Opinion on the General Court’s judgment in CK Telecoms, in which she asks the Court of Justice to annul the judgment and refer the case back to the General Court. An AG Opinion is an…
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Apple v AliveCor – What it tells us about future MedTech antitrust battles
There was an interesting development at the intersection of Big Tech and medical devices in California this week, as Justice Jeffrey S. White largely denied Apple’s motion to dismiss a claim from AliveCor in the US District Court, Northern District of California, alleging that Apple unlawfully monopolised the U.S. market for watchOS heart rate analysis…