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Summary of the panel ‘Sports & Competition Law‘28.10.2025

We report on the next panel at the LIDC Congress 2025 in Vienna focused on the application of competition law to sports and the latest developments on the various aspects of this particular market.

This dicussion was chaired by Fernando Castillo de la Torre (Director Legal Service Competition and Mergers Team at the European Commission).

Georgios Gryllos (White & Case, former Legal Secretary and Référendaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union) first gave short but comprehensive overview of the recent case-law of the European Court of Justice, mentioning in particular the Superleague, ISU and Royal Antwerp judgments of December 2023 and the more recent Diarra (FIFA) judgment on restrictions on transfers of football players. The attention is now on three other pending cases (Tondela, ROGON and RCC Sports). He summarised the AG Opinions in these cases, where judgments are expected soon.

Ben Van Rompuy (Associate Professor of European Competition Law at Leiden Law School) elaborated on some principled issues of justifications (in particular the Meca-Medina/Wouters justification), players home-grown rules, and the dichotomy object/effect that now has a decisive impact on such justifications. The analysis under recent case-law may be sometimes circular and give rise to some practical challenges. In particular, the move towards assessing justifications only under Article 101(3) TFEU (and its possible equivalent under art 102 TFEU) was discussed.

Marine Montejo (EU-qualified lawyer Competition and Sports Law) focused on dispute settlement and in particular sports arbitration. The judgments in ISU and Seraing were presented and critically analysed. In Seraing the ECJ has formulated for the first time more concretely the type of judicial review of arbitral awards that EU law requires.

Fabian Larcher (Head of Legal Department at Austrian Ski Association – ÖSV) finally zoomed in on the experience of the Austrian Ski Federation and presented a recent dispute concerning media rights, where the German and Austrian federations contested some centralization measures adopted at wider level. He also shared some personal reflections on arbitration and judicial review, based on his experience.

There was time for all panellists to comment on each other interventions and for the public to put a couple of questions as well which has shown that there are still many interesting legal issues to be addressed in this area in the future.

#LIDCVienna

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Summary of the panel ‘Sports & Competition Law‘28.10.2025

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