There is something ironic about looking back at FIFA's earliest regulations on agents and realising that, more than thirty years on, we are still essentially arguing about the same things: who may broker a transfer, how much they may charge for it, and who polices that market. The acronyms have changed, the amounts have changed, even the profession's name has changed, but the underlying tension remains intact. And now, for the first time, we have a weighty judicial answer on just how far that regulation may go. The whole journey is worth retracing.
1991-2002: the blueprint
The 1991 regulation, revised in 2002, dealt with a figure now nearly forgotten: the "match agent", who arranged friendly matches and tournaments between national teams or clubs from different confederations, not the agent who negotiates player transfers. Even so, that regime already contained the structural elements we will meet again decades later: a licence issued by FIFA, a requirement that only natural persons could apply (Article 4), professional civil liability insurance or, alternatively, a Swiss bank guarantee of CHF 100,000 (Articles 8 and 9), and a commission cap fixed at 25% of the amount negotiated (Article 19). The regulatory logic rested on a personal licence, compulsory insurance, a capped commission and disputes settled internally by FIFA: this is the blueprint for everything that followed.
2015-2022: from a lighter touch back to control
In 2015, FIFA adopted Intermediaries Regulations that significantly eased the previous requirements, leaving most oversight to national federations. It was under that decentralising philosophy that Portugal enacted Lei n.º 54/2017 of 14 July, still in force today, which repealed Lei n.º 28/98 and brought together, in a single statute, the sports employment contract, the sports training contract and the activity of the sports agent.
It is in Articles 36 to 39 of that law that today's most relevant rules are found: a ban on dual representation (Article 36(2)), an absolute ban on representing minors (Article 36(3)), mandatory registration with the federation (Articles 36(1) and 37), a cap of 10% of the player's net remuneration as the agent's maximum fee (Article 38(3)), a maximum contract term of two years with no automatic renewal (Article 38(4) and (5)), and an exhaustive list of entities and professionals barred from carrying out the activity — sports companies, clubs, directors, holders of positions within the governing bodies of companies or clubs, coaches, players, referees, doctors and masseurs (Article 39). None of these rules originated in a FIFA directive: they are choices made by the Portuguese legislature, predating FIFA's regime and autonomous from it.
It was that very drift toward regulatory lightness from 2015 that FIFA decided to reverse in December 2022, adopting the FIFA Football Agent Regulations (FFAR), currently in force in the version approved by the FIFA Council on 10 December 2024, effective from 1 January 2025. The requirement to sit a FIFA examination returns. The term "football agent" replaces "intermediaryTerm used by FIFA before 2015 to designate those who represent players or clubs in transfer negotiations, now replaced by the football agent category." (Article 5). Companies can no longer act directly: only licensed natural persons may do so (Article 11(3)). A commission cap also returns (Article 15), and an annual fee and mandatory continuing professional education are introduced (Articles 7 and 9).
The national transposition: less autonomy than it seems
Here is the point that a hasty reading of the FFAR easily misses: Article 3 of the FFAR itself obliges member federations to adopt, by 30 September 2023, a national regulation that "incorporates Articles 11 to 21 of these regulations by reference to those articles" — precisely the block that governs representation, fees, and agents' rights and duties. Federations may be stricter than the FFAR on these matters, but never more permissive.
The FPF's Football Agents Regulations, in force since 1 October 2023, comply with that obligation quite literally. Its Article 19 reproduces, with the same structure and the same percentages, the fee schedule in Article 15 of the FFAR (5% of the individual's remuneration in single representation, or 3% above USD 200,000; 10% of the transfer compensation when representing the releasing club). Its Article 20(1)(b) and (c) reproduces, almost word for word, the "approach" rule in Article 16(1)(b) and (c) of the FFAR: the prohibition on contacting or engaging a client already bound to another agent by an exclusive representation agreement, except during the final two months of that agreement.
In other words, a substantial part of the Portuguese national regulation is not autonomous Portuguese law: it is the FFAR, imported by statutory imposition from FIFA. (Strictly speaking, the FPF went beyond the required minimum on some points: its Article 14(9) adds "physiotherapists" to the list of persons barred under Article 39 of Law No. 54/2017, and Article 14(8)(i) to (iv) adds its own fitness requirements, such as convictions for crimes of violence, racism or xenophobia in sport, which appear neither in the Law nor in the FFAR.) But in the part that matters for this article, fees and approaches, the transposition is practically a copy. And that matters a great deal in light of what happened next.
The short circuit in Dortmund and Mainz
The FFAR immediately ran into trouble before European courts. The Dortmund Regional Court, in May 2023, granted an interim injunction (case 8 O 1/23 (Kart)) suspending the application of several FFAR provisions on suspicion that they breached EU competition law. In parallel, the Mainz Regional Court, hearing an injunction action brought by a players' agent and his company against FIFA, decided on 30 March 2023 to stay the proceedings and refer to the Court of Justice of the European Union a preliminary question on the compatibility of the FFAR with Articles 56, 101 and 102 TFEU and with Article 6 GDPR.
Faced with this instability, the FIFA Council decided, on 30 December 2023, to temporarily suspend worldwide the application of the FFAR rules affected by the Dortmund ruling, recommending that member federations do the same except where doing so would conflict with mandatory provisions of national law. The FPF responded with Official Communication No. 435 of 31 December 2023: it kept in force only the rules of its own regulations that were already mandatorily imposed by Lei n.º 54/2017 — the ban on dual representation, the ban on representing minors, registration and authorisation by the FPF, the maximum service fee, the maximum contract term, and the restrictions on who may carry out the activity. Everything else was suspended.
The ruling of 16 July 2026
The CJEU ruled in Case C-209/23 (RRC Sports GmbH v FIFA). It is a long, technically dense judgment, but the essentials can be summarised as follows:
The Court classified FIFA simultaneously as an "association of undertakings" for the purposes of Article 101 TFEU (paragraph 87, on the basis that it indirectly groups together clubs and leagues carrying out economic activity) and as holding a dominant position in the markets for agency services and for the employment of players/coaches for the purposes of Article 102 TFEU (paragraph 244), owing to the regulatory, oversight and sanctioning power it exercises over those markets even without operating directly in them (paragraph 243).
Of the five categories of rules examined, the Court identified only two as restrictions of competition "by object" — the most serious category, which dispenses with any examination of actual effects (paragraph 170):
1. The rule in Article 14(12)(a) of the FFAR, which deprives the agent who took part in an initial transfer of part of his commission if the individual is transferred again before the end of the negotiated employment contract, even where the agent no longer represents him and had nothing to do with the new transfer — found to be of an "arbitrary nature" (paragraph 137).
2. The "approach" rule in Article 16(1)(b) and (c) — the same rule the FPF replicated in its Article 20 — insofar as it unduly favours agents already bound by an exclusive representation agreement, who are exempted from the two-month waiting period that applies to everyone else (paragraphs 158 and 233).
The commission cap (Article 15 of the FFAR / Article 19 of the FPF Regulations) and the restriction on dual representation (Article 12(8) to (10)), by contrast, were not treated at the outset as restrictions by object (paragraph 118, as to the cap; paragraphs 194-195, as to dual representation), but remain subject to a proportionality test that the Mainz court will have to apply in concrete terms. In setting out that test, the Court already issued a significant warning: it expressly rejected the notion that "correcting market anomalies" — the justification FIFA invoked for the commission cap — could suffice, on its own, as a legitimate objective, since it is of a "purely economic nature" (paragraphs 182-183 and 196). FIFA will have to show that the rule actually pursues objectives such as protecting clients against conflicts of interest or protecting inexperienced players (paragraph 197), and that no less restrictive means existed that would be equally effective.
As for the GDPR, the Court found two points incompatible with Article 6(1), first subparagraph, point (f), for failing the requirements of necessity and the balancing of interests: the public, indiscriminate disclosure of all transactions and their respective fees (Article 19(e) of the FFAR), for breaching the data minimisation principle (paragraph 370); and the disclosure of any sanction imposed on agents or clients (Article 19(d)), with no distinction as to the seriousness of the facts and no time limit on its availability (paragraphs 380-382). The Court also left open, for the Mainz court to verify, a further and distinct question: if those sanctions fall within Article 10 GDPR (data concerning criminal convictions), FIFA would be barred from disclosing them at all, since it is not a public authority of a Member State (paragraphs 347-351). Both points — disclosure of all transactions and of all sanctions — also appear, with no distinction, in Article 23 of the FPF Regulations.
The CJEU did not annul anything directly: it referred the final decision back to the Mainz court (paragraph 112), which will have to apply these criteria case by case, on the basis of the factual matters that only that court can assess.
What this means for Portugal
The conclusion it would be tempting to draw — "Lei n.º 54/2017 shields the Portuguese market from international turbulence" — is only entirely true for part of the structure. The rules protecting minors (Article 36(3) of Lei n.º 54/2017 and Article 17 of the FPF Regulations) and the list of persons barred from the activity (Article 39 of the law and Article 14(9) of the Regulations) are genuine Portuguese law, hierarchically superior and mandatory: neither FIFA nor the Dortmund suspension touches them.
But the commission cap and the approach rule in force in Portugal for purely domestic transfers are not autonomous Portuguese rules — they are the FFAR, imported through statutory imposition. And the approach rule is precisely one of the two the CJEU has already classified as a restriction of competition by object, in its most problematic segment. If the Mainz court confirms that incompatibility with Article 101 TFEU — which the CJEU's judgment makes fairly likely, since it has already settled the legal classification and left only its application to the facts — the equivalent rule in Article 20(1) of the FPF Regulations is left without solid legal cover, even though the Mainz decision would not directly bind the Portuguese courts.
What remains unresolved — and this is where practitioners will need to keep paying attention over the coming months — is whether the FPF will move first and revise that rule on its own initiative, or wait for the final decision from Mainz before touching a rule that, technically, was never genuinely its own.
Horacio Bap. Ladera
Lawyer
© 2026 Horacio Baptista Ladera. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without prior authorization.
