The Premier League has suffered a significant setback after a tribunal deemed its sponsorship rules – which operated for almost three years – null and void.
In a bombshell verdict – that could now trigger a series of giant compensation claims and plunge the competition into crisis – an independent panel has sided with champions Manchester City and deemed that the league’s Associated Party Transaction (APT) regulations, which ran from December 2021 to November 2024, were unlawful in their entirety.
After proposed deals with Etihad Airways and First Abu Dhabi Bank were blocked in 2023, City took the Premier League to court, effectively declaring war. They claimed that the league’s APT rules, around commercial deals clubs do with parties linked to them, were unlawful.
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In September last year, a tribunal agreed with City, highlighting three elements which it deemed unlawful. One was the fact that shareholder loans – where parties with stakes in clubs such as Arsenal and Liverpool often lend money at low or no interest – were not subject to the same fair market value tests included in the APT rules.
At the time, a row erupted between City and the Premier League, with the latter claiming that a number of tweaks to the rules would suffice.
Chief executive Richard Masters claimed the tribunal had actually ‘endorsed’ the APT rules, and added it had only found ‘certain discrete elements…that need to be amended’.