UEFA, Governance, and the Control of Club Competition in ...

economy as a means to generate growth, full employment and the need for state protection againstthe vagaries of the market (King, 2002: 25-26). The post war consensus was buttressed by theFordist systems of mass production generating an unprecedented period of affluence in the 1950s.The economic boom that sustained the post-war consensus came under increasing pressure in the1960s with falling profits, and by the 1970s, the consensus had entered a new era of contentionfollowing the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, strained relations between labourand capital, increasing global competition and the oil crisis of 1973 (King, 2003: 23-24). Accordingto King, ‘this post-Fordism and the Thatcherite ideas which transformed its creation constituted theframework for football in the 1990s’ (King, 2002: 26-27). King sees the transformation of Englishfootball in the context of ‘organic developments which were very substantially determined byframing concepts established in certain conjectural moments. The adoption of certain free-marketprinciples in the organisation of labour relations in the 1960s initiated a course of developmentwhich by the 1980s demanded the reform of football in line with the new political economicrealities which those free-market principles had brought about’ (King, 2002: 67-68). Thus thegrowing influence of the clubs in an increasingly commercially and financially autonomousbusiness, culminating in the breakaway of the top division, can only be understood by reference tothe British political economy in the 1970s and 1980s.King’s compelling analysis is developed further on a pan-European scale in The EuropeanRitual (King, 2003). King argues that globalisation and increasing economic competition reducedthe unilateral control of the European governments, and that political and economic integration wasbecoming increasingly necessary by the 1980s. King recognises the contrasting political economiesof European nations – France and Germany remained, for example, more interventionist than theUnited Kingdom – but argues that ‘as multinational corporations became increasingly importantactors on the global stage and as financial markets became more international and less stable,European nation states have been forced to adopt an increasingly laissez-faire approach to theeconomy’ (King, 2003: 14-25). The political economy of Europe increasingly was liberalisedthrough the accelerated development of the EU. The Single European Act of 1986 legislated for afree market in goods, services and capital, creating a single market across Europe in which theauthority of the nation state was superseded by a transnational regime (King, 2003: 25). At the sametime that Europe was becoming increasingly characterised by neo-liberal economics, following thebreakdown of the post-war economic consensus, so too was sport, and football in particular,following an increasingly commercial free-market orientated approach. This rapidcommercialisation of football at the end of the twentieth century generated growth in externalpolitical interest: ‘Professional sport is increasingly best understood as a commodity that hasdeveloped complex and symbiotic relationships within the global media complex and sportsmarketing industry’ (Caiger and Gardiner, 2000a: 1). In such a context, it is of little surprise that theEU would take an increasingly interventionist approach, and indeed that those operating withinprofessional sport would seek to use the institutions as a means to protect and extend their owninterests. As Boyes argues: ‘the economic activity prompted by the commodification of sport hasprovided EU law with an entrée into sporting regulation in relation to the competency to ensureeffective competition’ (Boyes, 2000: 73).The growth and development of the European Union have therefore had an undeniableimpact on the governance of football both in Europe, and on a global level. From the 1970s the EUstarted to take greater interest in the regulations imposed by sporting governing bodies with regardto the application of EU law. In 1974, Walrave and Koch v UCI, 6 the European Court of Justice(ECJ) established professional sport as an economic activity, and as such established that theregulations of sporting organisations normally assumed to be autonomous would be subject to theapplication of EU law where an economic impact existed. This was consolidated by the ruling ofthe ECJ in Dona v Mantero in 1976. 7 Sporting bodies, perhaps underestimating the significance ofthese rulings continued to remain at arms length from the increasingly important political6 Walrave and Koch v UCI [1975] 1 CMLR 3207 Dona v Mantero [1976] 2 CMLR 57825