Real Madrid sue Uefa for €4bm over Super League

Real Madrid is planning to seek more than €4bn in damages from Uefa for alleged losses it suffered after European football’s governing body blocked proposals for a controversial Super League. The Spanish football club believes it has lost out on revenues of between €4.5bn and €4.7bn since Uefa vetoed the European Super League plan in 2021, according to documents produced by experts hired by Real Madrid.

The figures, seen by the Financial Times, take into account lost match day, broadcast and commercial revenues at Real Madrid, one of the driving forces behind the Super League proposals. One person close to the club said it was planning to shortly file a claim for damages of more than €4bn in the courts.

Real Madrid’s assessment comes after Uefa — alongside La Liga and RFEF, the Spanish football league and national governing body respectively — lost an appeal at the provincial court of Madrid on Wednesday. It upheld a ruling by Madrid’s commercial court that Uefa abused its dominant competitive position by vetoing plans four years ago for the breakaway Super League, which would have upended European club football.

The original proposal for the Super League was for a 20-team league in which 15 clubs, including Real Madrid, were granted permanent member status. The plan collapsed within 72 hours of being made public after widespread opposition from football fans and politicians.

A22 Sports Management, the company behind the Super League, rebranded the proposed competition as the “Unify League” in December, adding that they now favoured open competition involving more clubs. Real Madrid said the court ruling confirmed that Uefa “seriously breached” EU competition law and that the judgment “paves the way for substantial claims to compensate for the damages suffered by the club”.

The EU’s Court of Justice ruled in December 2023 that Uefa had acted unlawfully in threatening to impose sanctions on players and clubs for joining the proposed Super League. As well as being the governing body for European football, Uefa also operates tournaments, including the elite Champions League, which would have been severely undermined by the formation of the Super League.

Real Madrid has won the Champions League a record 15 times. Uefa said the ruling by the provincial court of Madrid “does not validate the abandoned ‘super league’ project announced in 2021” or “undermine” the new rules it has since adopted for authorising new competitions. “These rules ensure that any cross-border competitions are assessed on objective, transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate criteria,” it added.

Uefa said it would review the court judgment before deciding on any further steps. Two people familiar with the case said Uefa could appeal against the ruling at the Spanish supreme court. That would force Real Madrid to postpone any claim for damages until a resolution was found, one of the people said. La Liga president Javier Tebas hit back at Real Madrid, in his latest battle with the most successful club in the competition’s history. “This ruling does not in any way represent an endorsement of the Super League or any other format,” he said.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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