Friday, June 2, 2006

Antitrust Authorities Weigh in on Italian Soccer Scandals

In an interesting development in the Italian soccer scandal, about which I blogged here, the country's antitrust regulators appear poised to get involved. Here's part of the BNA story:

ROME--Italy's antitrust authority on May 25 weighed in on the nation's ever-growing soccer scandals and called for widespread changes in the way players and agents operate.

The announcement from the Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato is an unusual one because it doesn't mandate specific action or sanction anyone or any organization. The four-week-old scandal, which involves charges of game fixing and illegal betting, has so far resulted in charges being filed in around a dozen criminal and civil cases. But this is the first time a regulator has weighed in on the issue.

The authority noted that it had conducted a fact-finding inquiry that shows many cases in which agents represent players in negotiations with clubs in which the agent has an interest--either financial or because of family members in key posts.

"It is believed that such relationships can prevent the market from functioning correctly," a spokesman for the authority told BNA. "We call on the national football federation to change the way these rules work."

The authority also suggested elimination of the agents' register, reduction of penalties for players who quit contracts with agents, and creation of incentives to create more competition between agents.
What's interesting about this, from a comparative perspective, is that in the few American cases where an agent has also had an interest in the team with which a client was negotiating (namely, Detroit Lions v. Argovitz, 580 F. Supp. 542), similar conflicts have been addressed as breaches of fiduciary duty, not antitrust violations. Of course, the desire of the regulators to get involved may have more to do with the publicity the scandal has attracted than the merits of the antitrust claims.

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