Man City accuse Premier League of ‘misleading’ clubs and say APT rules now void

Manchester City have accused the Premier League of “misleading” clubs over the legal case the Blues fought over top-flight rules governing commercial deals.

Man City wrote to the other 19 clubs and the league on Monday night to challenge the league’s interpretation of the outcome, and the four-in-a-row champions insisted their position was that all the associated party transaction (APT) rules were now void.

“Regrettably, the summary is misleading and contains several inaccuracies,” the club’s general counsel Simon Cliff wrote in an email seen by the PA news agency.

“Of even greater concern, however, is the Premier League’s suggestion that new APT rules should be passed within the next 10 days.

“When the Premier League consulted on and proposed the original APT Rules in late 2021, we pointed out that the process (which took several weeks) was rushed, ill-thought-out and would result in rules that were anti-competitive.  The recent award has validated those concerns entirely.

“The tribunal has declared the APT rules to be unlawful.  MCFC’s position is that this means that all of the APT rules are void, and have been since 2021.”

Earlier this year, City launched a legal challenge to the league’s associated party transaction (APT) rules on the grounds they breached UK competition law, and an arbitration panel was set up to consider the matter.

The APT rules are designed to ensure commercial deals involving entities linked to a club’s owners are done for fair market value.

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On Monday, City and the Premier League each published the arbitration panel’s 175-page judgment, and drew very different conclusions from it .

Man City see this as a huge win, and in a statement said the panel had found the APT rules “unlawful”, “structurally unfair” and “discriminatory”.

They also pointed out that decisions made by the Premier League to block two transactions had been set aside after the panel found them to be procedurally unfair, because City were denied access to data used by the league in making its decision and because of unnecessary delays in the process.

The league said in a statement that City had failed in the “majority” of their challenge to the APT rules.

It said the two findings against it concerned the exclusion of shareholder loans from the rules, and the wording of some amendments made to the rules earlier this year.

“Otherwise, the Premier League rulebook has been found to comply with competition and public law standards and is an effective and necessary system for assessing the fair market value of associated party transactions to ensure the integrity of the league’s profitability and sustainability rules,” the league said.

The league said the panel had not disagreed with the league’s assessment of the value of the two City transactions that have been set aside, only that the league should have provided City with the comparable transaction data used to make the decisions prior to making it.