Manchester City and the Premier League have been involved in a legal battle since June last year. A match that was about the Premier League’s rules for Associated Party Transaction (APT).
The rules stated that commercial agreements involving clubs had to be assessed by the Premier League in order to be determined to be of “fair market value”. However, Manchester City claimed that they had been victims of “discrimination” over the rules, calling them a “tyranny of the majority”.
In October, an independent arbitration panel found that the rules were “illegal”.
City’s legal team was said to have won seven of their main arguments – although “many” of their claims were rejected by the panel. They were allegedly only required to show that the rules were illegal for one of their arguments
The Premier League said in a statement that the tribunal had found “the rules are necessary for the league’s financial controls to be effective”. It added that the Tribunal “identified a small number of discrete elements of the rules that, in their current form, are not in accordance with competition and public law requirements”, and stated that they would propose the necessary changes to the rules in due course.
The following month, Premier League clubs voted 16-4 in favour of the changes, with Manchester City being one of the clubs to vote against.
The reigning champions then commenced further legal action against the Premier League in January for the changes, with league chief executive Richard Masters stating that City “sought a declaration that the changes approved by the clubs in November (and therefore the current APT rules) are unlawful and invalid”.
The Daily Mail’s Mike Keegan now reports that an independent panel has now reached a final verdict on the trial surrounding the former APT regulations, ruling that they were illegal “in their entirety”.
It is claimed that any deal rejected or reduced in value under the system, which ran between December 2021 and November 2024, could be subject to “strong claims for damages” in the event that a club “believes that its competitive performance was harmed by a decision made under the previous APT system” – which, it is said, could throw the league “into chaos”.
The verdict is not related to City’s latest legal challenge to the changed rules voted through by the clubs, who have yet to receive their own verdict. It also has no relation to City’s 115-plus alleged violations of the Premier League and UEFA’s financial rules.
A statement from the final award ruling – referring to the amended rules despite the fact that no judgment has yet been rendered in the case – reads (via the Daily Mail): “In the first partial award, it was declared that the APT rules and the amended APT rules were unlawful in three respects.
“The question now arises for decision whether these three respects can be severed from the remaining APT rules so that the remaining APT rules are valid and enforceable.
“The three respects in which the APT Rules and the amended APT Rules were unlawful cannot be severed with the result that the APT Rules as a whole are invalid and unenforceable.”
The Premier League has yet to officially comment on the verdict, although its chief executive Richard Masters reportedly told clubs this afternoon: “The previous APT rules are no longer in place, and new rules were voted into effect.
“The league has previously told clubs that this decision was about the legal status of previous APT rules and would not affect the operation of new rules.”
