FIFA through a regulatory lens

Every four years, and especially in the week before the World Cup final on Sunday, football is about as close as the world gets to a single global product. Billions of viewers, very large broadcasting revenues, and a tournament owned and commercialised by a governing body with considerable influence over the structure of the sport. After three decades in telecoms regulation, I find it an interesting thought experiment to ask what a familiar regulatory toolkit - market definition, dominance, access, conduct - would make of a body that sits outside it. The aim is not to reach a verdict on FIFA, but to see what the method draws out.

 

What the lens shows

FIFA is not a company in the usual sense, and it does not control everything in football. The Laws of the Game are set by the International Football Association Board, of which FIFA is one member (with four votes) alongside the football associations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (with one vote each). Domestic leagues, national associations and continental confederations all play their part. But viewed through an economic lens, FIFA looks like a significant platform at the apex of the global game: it owns and commercialises the sport's most valuable event, it sets rules on player status and transfers, and it authorises international competitions.

A question competition law is already asking

That kind of position naturally attracts competition law attention. In its December 2023 ruling on the European Super League, the Court of Justice of the European Union found that FIFA and UEFA's rules requiring prior approval for new interclub competitions, enforced through the threat of sanctions against clubs and players who took part without it, were unlawful where they were not governed by transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate criteria. Absent such criteria, the Court held, the regime was capable of amounting to an abuse of a dominant position.

The access analogy

This is where the regulatory analogy becomes interesting. In telecoms, a finding of significant market power can lead to access obligations, a requirement to provide access to bottleneck infrastructure on fair and reasonable terms. If one were to ask the equivalent question in football, the relevant bottleneck would not be a physical network but access to the organised football system: competitions, eligibility, the international calendar, transfer rules and association membership. The point is not that football should be regulated like telecoms, or that this yields any neat conclusion about FIFA. It is to ask the same hard questions about where market power sits and how it is used

Where such questions lead is a separate matter. One could imagine a lighter, behavioural approach rather than anything structural: transparent procedures for authorising new competitions, and some external scrutiny of the rules on transfers, agents and eligibility. Whether any of that is warranted, or workable, is genuinely open. Football is not a standard industry, and several of its features complicate any direct comparison: it has to protect the integrity of the sport, accommodate national representation, and coordinate a single global calendar. None of these factors make the regulatory questions go away, but each is a reason to apply the analysis with care rather than assume the answers carry straight over from other sectors.

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is perhaps the clearest illustration. The product is close to irreplaceable, which gives the rights-holder real negotiating strength. The UK's listed events regime, which requires events of national importance such as the World Cup final to remain available on free-to-air television rather than exclusively behind a pay-TV subscription, already intervenes here. It does not cap the price of rights, but it does restrict how exclusively they can be sold. The harder question is whether a framework designed for a handful of television channels still fits a market of streaming services and global platforms. Recent reform extending the regime to live coverage delivered via streaming services shows the regulatory architecture is already evolving.

Why nothing more has emerged

Why has nothing more comprehensive emerged? Largely jurisdiction. No single national regulator has the reach to oversee a global body. Competition law applies where FIFA's conduct affects European markets, and recent cases, including the Court of Justice's ruling on FIFA's transfer rules after a player brought a challenge, confirm that economic law reaches football. But litigation is episodic and reactive; it is not the same as an ongoing regulatory framework. The UK's new Independent Football Regulator, for its part, is deliberately domestic in scope. FIFA sits above it.

A question worth asking

None of this points to an obvious answer, and it is not meant to. Football has its own logic and its own institutions, and the right approach may well look quite different from anything used in other regulated sectors. But the underlying economics are familiar enough that the questions are, at least, worth asking, particularly with the World Cup final fast approaching.

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Sean Kennedy is a Partner at DT Economics with over 30 years of experience in telecoms regulation, advising network operators, regulators and governments.