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Football-legal
01
Jan
2021
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Fernando ROITMAN
Raffaele POLI
Financial control
Article
International
Football Legal # 14

The growth of MCO in football and the reasons behind it


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Despite the limits imposed by the outcome of the ENIC case to the MCO model, multi-club ownership in football has nevertheless proliferated, particularly in the last decade. As of 2016, more than 20 clubs in the top 15 European leagues[1] were linked to MCO structures.[2] Currently, there are at least 40. Today, there exist at least 21 individual cases of MCO involving clubs from the top divisions of the so-called big-5 European leagues (England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France) alone; 18 of them originated from 2013, 14 when only the past five years are considered.

The significant financial growth experienced by the football industry since the start of new millennium is central in explaining this scenario. In 1996-1997, around the time of ENIC’s first investment in the game, the aggregate revenues of the top 20 clubs in Europe amounted to EUR 1.2 billion.[3] For the 2018-2019 season, the same figure skyrocketed to EUR 9.3 billion, a value nearly eight times higher.[4] A similar trend is also evident across European football as a whole. Between 2009 and 2018 alone, the aggregate revenues of all top division clubs...

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Topics
  • Financial control
Keywords
  • Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)
  • Financial control
  • Multi-Club Ownership (MCO)
  • Player transfer
Authored by
Fernando ROITMAN
About Fernando ROITMAN
Raffaele POLI
About Raffaele POLI
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