Abstract des Autors

As Association Football Clubs look to finance player transfer fees, lenders have seen an increasingly prevalent role and will seek to secure their loan against club assets. One of the methods of securing lending has been to utilise the transfer market value of player economic rights. This paper examines the insolvency effects of a lender taking an interest in the eventual, prospective proceeds of a sale of a player’s economic rights. It asks how a transaction might be structured to secure a loan using the value of a player’s economic right and examines the potential pitfalls within the private international law rules of association football and the insolvency rules of England and Wales. The authors suggest that FIFA regulations involving third-party participation, Articles 18bis and 18ter, are incongruent with the rules controlling the same matter as found within the English FA and the English Premier League. The result produces inconsistent certainty as to how a lender could structure a loan. It is suggested that the FIFA regulations apply with direct effect and any transaction should heed to the stricter interpretation found therein. Secondly, the case in the matter of Football Creditors highlights a red line for the risks of unsecured lending to football clubs. The paper proposes two methods for ensuring a transaction provides a lender with adequate protection against insolvency and the Football Creditor Rule and against the unclear FIFA regulations when a lender uses the proceeds from the sale of a player’s economic right as collateral.