For more than five years, the United States Department of Justice has pursued a corruption case against the highest levels of international soccer, charging dozens of the sport’s senior officials with crimes like money laundering and fraud. Now its antitrust division has joined the fight.
The antitrust division is focused on a yearslong dispute over where matches can take place. FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, is considering strengthening rules that keep teams from playing competitive regular-season games outside their home countries.
The antitrust division’s interest comes as a sports promotion company based in New York, Relevent Sports, is suing FIFA and the United States Soccer Federation, accusing the organizations of conspiring to block Relevent from bringing regular-season games from overseas leagues to North America.
Relevent, which is owned by Stephen M. Ross, the real estate developer and principal owner of the Miami Dolphins, filed its antitrust suit last September after its efforts to stage a Liga game featuring Barcelona in Miami in 2018 met opposition from FIFA and the Spanish federation, which blocked the teams from playing overseas. A later effort to bring two teams from Ecuador to the United States failed after the U.S. Soccer Federation refused to give its permission for the game to be played.
Makan Delrahim, the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, wrote in March to the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, and Cindy Parlow Cone, who heads U.S. Soccer, to express his concerns after learning an influential FIFA advisory committee had recommended to FIFA’s governing council that “official domestic matches should take place on the territory of the member association concerned.”
The FIFA Council has yet to ratify the recommendation.
“We specifically are concerned that FIFA could violate U.S. antitrust laws by restricting the territory in which teams can play league games,” Delrahim wrote in the letter, which has not been previously disclosed. Relevent included the letter as part of its amended complaint when it filed a new lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday.
FIFA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Justice Department’s involvement adds a new dimension to the case brought by Relevent. FIFA has tried to cultivate a close relationship with U.S. authorities since the corruption indictments were handed down in 2015, dismantling the top tier of international soccer’s leadership. FIFA’s top lawyers have been in regular contact with American justice officials in an attempt to prove the organization has changed significantly and should be repaid some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution seized from defendants who admitted to participating in bribery and kickback schemes.
Despite the changes, FIFA is still mired in legal troubles. The most serious of them concerns its president, Infantino, who was informed in July that he is the subject of a criminal investigation over his meetings with the Swiss official overseeing the FIFA corruption inquiry. Infantino has said any claims of improper behavior are “absurd.” The official, Michael Lauber, has resigned as attorney general and last week was stripped of immunity from prosecution.
FIFA has also invested significant time and effort in strengthening its relationships in the United States after awarding the right to host the 2026 World Cup to a U.S.-led bid that included Canada and Mexico. Infantino has visited the White House for meetings with President Trump, and was also invited in January to address guests at a dinner that Trump hosted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Relevent’s announcement of a deal with La Liga for regular-season games to be played in the United States, starting with the 2018 game between Barcelona and Girona, has revived a contentious issue that had largely been dormant since the English Premier League was forced to withdraw plans for an international round of games, proposed in 2008, after an outcry at home and overseas.
While efforts like Relevent’s continue to face opposition from national federations and traditionalists, the growing popularity of European teams beyond their traditional markets has increased a demand for competitive matches played far from teams’ home arenas. Such games would be worth millions of dollars in additional revenue for participants. In recent years, Spain and Italy have signed contracts to play cup games in Saudi Arabia.
Staging such games could pose a threat to interest in local competitions, like Major League Soccer, the professional U.S. league. Don Garber, the league’s commissioner, who sits on the FIFA stakeholders committee that recommends prohibiting overseas games, expressed his opposition this year. “I feel very strongly that local fans should have the opportunity to see local games, and not for other purposes have those games played outside the home market,” Garber told ESPN in February.
FIFA rules currently allow games to be played on overseas territory only under “exceptional circumstances.” After the outcry over the plan to play the Liga game in Miami, the FIFA Council doubled down, issuing a declaration after a quarterly meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2018.
“The council emphasized the sporting principle that official league matches must be played within the territory of the respective member association,” FIFA said at the time.
Top U.S. sports leagues like the N.F.L., the N.B.A. and Major League Baseball have in recent years embraced taking their teams abroad for official games in hopes of reaching new audiences, with regular-season football becoming a feature of London’s sports scene. Relevent is arguing that American audiences are, by contrast, being deprived of the opportunity to see the best soccer.
“This geographic market division unreasonably restrains competition in the U.S., reduces output below competitive levels in the relevant market, and directly inflicts antitrust injury on promoters, like Relevent (who directly participate in the relevant market) and on U.S. fans of top-tier men’s professional soccer leagues,” Relevent said, according to a copy of its filing reviewed by The New York Times.
Source: Soccer - nytimes.com
