Regulating the Inevitable: Multi-Club Ownership and the Architecture of Sporting Integrity - By Andrea BOZZA & Samiksha MENON

Multi-club ownership has evolved from an exceptional governance model into a structural feature of contemporary football finance, generating regulatory challenges that existing integrity frameworks were not designed to address.

This article examines the legal architecture governing MCO across FIFA, UEFA, confederation and domestic levels, tracing the doctrinal evolution from formal ownership assessment to the functional decisive-influence standard developed in ENIC, DAC, Crystal Palace and the Pachuca-Club León precedents. It analyses the integrity risks generated by networked ownership structures across five domains - transfer markets, financial sustainability, labour markets, transparency and market structure - and assesses the compatibility of current and proposed regulatory responses with EU competition law, fundamental freedoms and the proportionality requirements established in Meca-Medina and European Superleague Company v. FIFA and UEFA.

The article concludes by proposing a five-pillar FIFA-level reform architecture comprising a global MCO registry, a unified definition of control, a...

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Regulating the Inevitable: Multi-Club Ownership and the Architecture of Sporting Integrity - By Andrea BOZZA & Samiksha MENON

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