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Sunny side up: the CJEU's Tondela judgment on no-poach agreements in professional football
Sunny side up: the CJEU's Tondela judgment on no-poach agreements in professional football
21 May 2026
Series
Blogs
21 May 2026
Authors: Jason Shardlow-Wrest, Georgina King and Theresa Lightbown
In April 2020, the Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional (LPFP) and a group of clubs participating in the First and Second Divisions of the Portuguese league concluded agreements on the following terms:
“No club will hire a player who unilaterally terminates his employment contract, citing difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic or by any exceptional decision arising therefrom, and in particular by the extension of the sporting season".
This, they claimed, was part of a necessary and proportionate response to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting indefinite suspension of the 2019/2020 sporting season. In this blog post, we break down the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) assessment of this alleged ‘no-poach’ agreement that caught the eye of Portugal’s Competition Authority. We then examine what this might signal about EU treatment of alleged anti-competitive agreements in the sporting world going forward.
On 7 April 2020 – the same day that the First Division clubs concluded their agreement with the LPFP – FIFA published Bulletin No. 1714 ("COVID-19 – Football Regulatory Issues"), recommending that clubs and players be encouraged to reach agreements on salary deferrals or reductions. The agreement in issue, however, appeared to go further than those recommendations, prompting the Portuguese Competition Authority to consider whether Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) had been breached.
Portuguese and EU competition law prohibits agreements between undertakings, decisions by associations of undertakings, and concerted practices which may restrict competition. Here, it was the agreement between the clubs themselves – rather than any decision by the LPFP acting in its regulatory capacity as an association of undertakings – that was under examination.
In April 2022, the Portuguese Competition Authority found that the agreement infringed EU and Portuguese competition law, principally on the basis of its restrictive effect on player recruitment. The Authority had previously imposed an interim measure on 26 May 2020, suspending the measures for 90 days – the LPFP and participating clubs publicly stated they agreed with that measure.
The LPFP and a group of professional clubs appealed before the Portuguese Competition, Regulation and Supervision Court, which referred three questions on the interpretation of Article 101(1) to the CJEU. The CJEU summarised the questions in its two-part response:
On 30 April 2026, the CJEU handed down its judgment.
The CJEU explained that no-poach agreements can be treated as equivalent to horizontal agreements for the sharing of "sources of supply": they artificially partition players amongst clubs, restrict players’ ability to offer their services to clubs, and limit their negotiating power – thereby indirectly affecting salary levels. On this basis, the referring court could validly find that the agreement pursued an objectively anti-competitive aim: to restrict competition on the player recruitment market.
That said, the CJEU recognised that an agreement with these characteristics can simultaneously pursue pro-competitive aims. In early 2020, a number of players had unilaterally terminated their contracts citing difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the CJEU accepted that a common block on poaching was, in those circumstances, a means of preserving roster stability across the Portuguese league – in particular, by preventing the late recruitment of players that might substantially alter the relative sporting strength of clubs mid-competition. The CJEU has accepted that such stability is a legitimate feature of professional football.
Taking those points together, the CJEU established a clear default position: no-poach agreements of this type constitute a restriction of competition by object – that is, a form of coordination which reveals a sufficient degree of harm to competition that an assessment of their actual effects is unnecessary. That concept must, however, be interpreted strictly.
The referring court may nonetheless conclude that this conduct falls outside the object box if it can identify clearly and specifically why the particular circumstances of this case take it outside that category. The CJEU pointed in particular to the unprecedented context of the suspended football season and the need for interim measures to protect the integrity of professional football competition.
The referring court is therefore tasked with determining whether the agreement should be viewed as an object restriction, taking into account its content, economic and legal context, and objective aims from a competition standpoint. Of course, even without such a finding, it would be open to the referring court to find a restriction of competition by effect.
The CJEU further confirmed that the referring court may find that the prohibition in Article 101(1) TFEU does not apply, on the basis of the exception in Wouters, if it can establish both that (a) the agreement cannot be categorised as an agreement having as its object the restriction of competition (since this exception is not available in those circumstances), and (b) the agreement is justified by a legitimate objective in the public interest that is not inherently anti-competitive, pursued by means that are suitable, necessary and proportionate to that objective.
The Tondela case remains live; the Portuguese courts must now analyse the agreements in question with the benefit of the CJEU’s ruling.
Taking a step back, following this judgment, and the European Superleague (C-333/21) and FIFA (C-650/22) decisions in 2023 and 2024, the CJEU’s framework for analysing anti-competitive behaviour in sport continues to grow in nuance and sophistication. Three key takeaways stand out:
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