On 30 April 2026, the Court of Justice of the EU (the “Court”) delivered its judgment in Case C‑133/24 CD Tondela and Others (“Tondela”). The case arose from a preliminary ruling request submitted by a Portuguese court concerning a no-poach agreement entered into by Portuguese professional football clubs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the first opportunity for the Court to examine a no-poach agreement in the sports industry in depth, and it comes at a time when labour-market restrictions feature high on EU competition authorities’ enforcement agenda (please see here for our coverage of key developments in this area). The judgment integrates the growing body of sports judgments, after Superleague, Royal Antwerp, ISU and FIFA, testing how EU competition law should factor in the specific features of sport.

The Court’s position is primarily driven by its assessment of the agreement’s context. The Court, in line with the Opinion of Advocate General (“AG”) Emiliou, confirms that no-poach agreements may amount to serious violations of Article 101 TFEU – that is, restrictions “by object”. But it recognises that the sports industry exhibits specificities that, in certain circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic here, may place no-poach agreements outside the scope of Article 101 TFEU altogether, or at least require a detailed analysis of their effects.

Key Takeaways

• Approach no-poach agreements with caution. Consistent with the prevailing approach of EU competition law authorities, the Court considers no-poach agreements capable of amounting to cartels involving the sharing of “sources of supply”, i.e., a by object infringement of EU competition rules, whilst leaving room for nuance (see next).  
• Context matters in the by object analysis. All by object restrictions are presumed harmful, but not all are equally self-evident. Price-fixing, output limitation and market sharing sit at the clearest end of the spectrum, where the contextual analysis can be limited to what is strictly necessary to establish a by object infringement. Other types of conduct, including no-poach agreements, are more ambivalent and may require a more detailed analysis of their context and objectives to determine if they fall in the by object box.  The “by object” classification has practical implications: lower burden of proof for enforcers (in that they need not prove that the conduct had anti-competitive effects) and generally higher penalties. 
• Sporting specificity may break the by object classification.Where exceptional circumstances – such as the COVID-19 pandemic – jeopardise the ordinary course of the sport season, a no-poach agreement may pursue a pro-competitive objective. While such agreement may limit competition on the player recruitment market, it may at the same time seek to preserve roster stability and the integrity of the competition by limiting opportunistic poaching during a period of severe disruption. These sport-specific objectives may militate against classifying the agreement as a restriction by object.
• Enlarged scope of the Meca-Medina antitrust exemption for sporting rules in the public interest.The Court confirms that Meca-Medina cannot save conduct that is restrictive by object. Only Article 101(3) TFEU can do that. However, it also clarifies that Meca-Medina is not limited to formal sporting rules or regulations issued by a sporting organisation. It may apply to any arrangement between a sports association and its members intended to regulate the sport, irrespective of the form adopted.

Background

The case stems from a no-poach agreement concluded during the COVID‑19 pandemic by the football clubs playing in the first and second divisions of the Portuguese Professional Football League (“LPFP”).

In particular, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak and associated government restrictions, in March 2020 the LPFP suspended the 2019/2020 football season. The LPFP and the players’ union then agreed to extend player contracts until the season’s new end date; while the clubs, during a Zoom meeting attended by the LPFP’s President, agreed not to hire players who unilaterally terminated their contracts due to the pandemic or the extension of the season – this constitutes the no-poach agreement at issue. These developments unfolded amid broader guidance from FIFA and the network of European competition authorities (the “European Competition Network”) that encouraged certain business cooperation to tackle critical public welfare issues posed by the pandemic.

Shortly after the conclusion of the no-poach agreement, the Portuguese competition authority (“AdC”) started an investigation. The AdC found that the agreement restricted competition ‘by object’ and fined the football clubs, together with the LPFP, in a total of approx. EUR 11.3 million. The clubs and the LPFP challenged that decision, and the Portuguese Competition Court (the “Referring Court”) referred questions to the Court to opine on whether: (i) the agreement should indeed be classified as by object; and/or (ii) it could benefit from the Meca-Medina exemption for sporting rules in the public interest.

Analysis

1. No-poach agreements in sports markets do not necessarily amount to by object restrictions

In its judgment, the Court confirms that no-poach agreements are, in principle, capable of constituting a serious violation of Article 101 TFEU. In its view, similar to other agreements between competitors involving sharing sources of supply, such arrangements restrict competition for access to key ‘inputs’, which may include the recruitment of highly skilled workers.

While the Court recognises that the same logic should normally apply in professional sports, where players constitute the main competitive asset through which clubs compete, both on the pitch and commercially, it ultimately adopts a more nuanced approach.

The Court therefore refrains from and cautions against rushed conclusions that any no-poach agreement should automatically be treated as a restriction by object, in particular in the sports industry. The Court recalls that, under well-established case-law, both in the context of the sport sector (e.g., Superleague) and more widely (e.g., Banco BPN/BIC Português), determining whether an agreement falls within the object category requires an examination of its content, economic and legal context, and of its objectives.

In Tondela, the Court also applies this analytic framework. The most interesting aspect of the judgment lies in the Court’s examination of the context surrounding the no-poach agreement. In keeping with previous cases, the Court places by object restrictions along a spectrum, with the intensity of the contextual analysis depending on the type of conduct at issue. At one end are the most blatant, long considered “hardcore cartel” type restrictions: price-fixing, output limitation, market sharing and customer allocation. For those, the Court confines the contextual assessment to what is strictly necessary to establish a by object characterisation, as their anticompetitive nature is considered evident and well established through past enforcement decisions. At the other end sit practices that may still qualify as restrictive by object, but whose harmful nature is less obvious. For those, the Court reiterates that they call for a “more in-depth examination” of the relevant context (para. 48).    

The context is particularly important in the sports sector, where competition takes place within a framework that inherently requires a degree of cooperation between clubs, federations and other participants. The Court accordingly assesses the no-poach agreement in the specific environment of professional football and a season disrupted by a public health crisis. Football clubs are competitors, but they are also interdependent, and the sport attractiveness to fans also stems from specific teams fielding specific players. The commercial value and attractiveness of the sporting product depend on merit, equal opportunity, roster stability and the integrity of the competition. That integrity may be undermined if clubs can alter the sporting balance while the season is still running by poaching key players from rivals. The Court recognises that this risk was particularly acute during the COVID-19 crisis, when the uncertainty surrounding the completion of the season and certain clubs’ financial distress could have enabled wealthier clubs to strengthen their squads while weakening competitors in the midst of the season.

As for the examination of the objective, the Court accepts that the agreement may pursue two aims at once: an anticompetitive aim on the player recruitment market, and a pro-competitive aim of preserving roster stability and the integrity of the ongoing competition (para. 86). The Court’s jurisprudence suggests that the existence of a pro-competitive aim may weigh against classifying an agreement as a restriction by object (e.g., Cartes Bancaires, Generics).

In the end, while leaving it to the Referring Court to determine whether the agreement constitutes a restriction by object, the Court paves the way for the Referring Court to reach the opposite conclusion.

• The enlarged scope of the Meca-Medina exemption

The Court confirms a settled rule: the Meca-Medina exemption is not available for restrictions by object. Competition enforcers must therefore first determine whether the agreement is restrictive by object. If it is not, the Meca-Medina exemption may be available and render Article 101(1) TFEU inapplicable where a restriction (i) pursues a legitimate public-interest objective and (ii) is necessary and proportionate to achieving such objective. By contrast, if the agreement restricts competition by its object, the only avenue to ‘save’ it is Article 101(3) TFEU, requiring the parties to the agreement to demonstrate efficiencies that outbalance its anti-competitive nature.

Interestingly, the Court opens up the Meca-Medina framework for a broader application. Until now, that framework had only been applied to formal sporting rules or regulations adopted by sport governing bodies/federations or other associations. In Tondela, the no-poach agreement stems from an agreement concluded between clubs, albeit with the support and involvement of the LPFP (which had attended Zoom discussions about the no-poach and subsequently issued a press release about it). In other words, the no-poach agreement is the result of an arrangement among the clubs themselves with informal endorsement (rather than a formal decision) from the League. Yet, the Court considers that the Meca-Medina exemption can apply to such an agreement, and, more generally, to “any conduct by which an association of undertakings and its members coordinate among themselves”, irrespective of the form that coordination takes (para. 95).

The task for the Referring Court is now to decide whether the ambivalence of the measure is enough to take the agreement outside the by object category, and, if so, whether the agreement is genuinely necessary and proportionate to preserving the regularity of sporting competitions in line with Meca-Medina. Here again, the Court appears to lean towards the Meca-Medina exemption applying to the no-poach agreement at issue.

• Practical Implications for the Sports Industry

Tondela confirms that the assessment of restrictions in the sports sector is inherently context‑specific. Forms of coordination between rivals that would ordinarily raise a red flag may require a more nuanced assessment in professional sport, which inevitably calls for some alignment to ensure the proper functioning of competitions. However, even though the Court does not give a carton rouge to no-poaches, it does not provide a carte blanche either. Important restrictions on competitive parameters such as player mobility will receive close scrutiny. Federations and clubs will therefore have to carefully consider and assess their options from an antitrust perspective on a case-by-case basis.Tondela also does not blow the final whistle. The pending RRC Sports and ROGON cases, concerning FIFA football-agent rules, form part of the same post-Superleague cycle of sports-law litigation and should further clarify the extent to which EU competition law allows sports actors to regulate labour-adjacent markets and preserve the balance of sporting competitions.