DOCTRINAL ANALYSIS · THE CASE · PART III OF III

Economic Rights in Football: A Doctrine Built by Arbitrators

Author: Juan Manuel Martinez Cartagena
Date: March 2026
Series: Economic Rights in Football: Origins, Practice, and Arbitral Doctrine
Technical Level: Advanced — sports lawyers, academics, football investors
Suggested citation: Martinez Cartagena, J.M. (2026). “Economic rights in football: a doctrine built by arbitrators, not by legislators”. juanmanuelmartinezc.com. Part III of III.

The two previous parts of this series established the starting point. Part I demonstrated that the transfer pass as a patrimonial asset was not designed: it was the unintended side effect of the English retention system, whose logic was progressively dismantled by case law, from Radford v. Campbell (1890) to the Bosman ruling (1995). Part II demonstrated that South America did not replicate that model — it transformed it: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, followed by Portugal and Spain, built a financial market on the future value of the player that grew so sophisticated as to force FIFA’s regulatory intervention in 2015 through the TPO prohibition.

What was missing — and what this third part addresses — is the central legal question: when litigation finally reached the Court of Arbitration for Sport, what did the arbitrators find? They found a contractual practice consolidated over decades without an explicit legal foundation; a market operating with efficiency but without normative definition; and, above all, the need to articulate a distinction that the organized football system itself had avoided for all that time.

This article analyzes the two awards that constitute the pillars of that doctrinal construction: CAS 2004/A/635, RCD Espanyol de Barcelona S.A.D. v. Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield (Lausanne, 27 January 2005), as the anchor point of the distinction between federative registration and economic rights — from which much of the subsequent litigation, arbitral doctrine, and professional football practice was structured — and TAS 2019/A/6524, Club Deportivo Leonel Álvarez v. Federación Colombiana de Fútbol & Club Atlético Nacional (Lausanne, 24 March 2021), a proceeding in which the author of this analysis participated as counsel for the appellant, in which that construction was resumed, extended, and applied to a different context, namely, the amateur sphere.

The purpose is not merely to describe what the Panels resolved, but to identify with precision what legal problem they actually resolved — and what they left open —, as well as to explain why those unresolved areas are more relevant than ever in a context marked by multi-club ownership and the growing sophistication of investment structures in football.

I. The Origin of the Dispute: A Contract Nobody Knew How to Interpret

On 4 August 1998, in Buenos Aires, Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield and RCD Espanyol de Barcelona entered into a tripartite contract with the Argentine player Martín Andrés Posse. The agreement was clear in its economic intent but profoundly ambiguous in its legal categorization.

The first clause of the contract stated:

“THE SELLER [Vélez] declares to be the holder of one hundred percent (100%) of the federative, economic, and sporting rights over the professional services of the player identified as P. In such capacity, THE SELLER transfers, sells, and conveys fifty percent (50%) of the federative, economic, and sporting rights over the professional football player P. to THE BUYER [Espanyol] for the sum of four million five hundred thousand United States dollars (USD 4,500,000).” — Contract of 4 August 1998, Clauses One and Two, reproduced in CAS 2004/A/635, p. 3.

The player, for his part, gave his express and irrevocable consent in the twelfth clause:

“Player P. appears personally in this act and declares to know all the terms and conditions, as well as the full text of the agreement entered into between THE SELLER and THE BUYER, and, voluntarily and irrevocably, gives his consent without any objection and undertakes to comply with everything related to his professional services as a footballer.” — CAS 2004/A/635, p. 4.

For three seasons, the structure operated without friction. The conflict emerged from the 2001/02 season, when Espanyol continued to employ the player without obtaining Vélez’s consent or compensating it for the use of the 50% of the rights that Vélez retained.

Espanyol’s argument was, apparently, simple: the player was already validly registered with the Spanish federation.

However, the position previously adopted by FIFA’s Player Status Committee only deepened the confusion. That body held that the transfer of 50% of the rights was contrary to the spirit and terms of the FIFA Regulations, under the understanding that the rules require a player to be registered to play for a single club. The assertion was correct at the federative level. It was, however, legally erroneous at the economic level.

That distinction — which FIFA did not know or did not wish to formulate — was not a technical detail. It was the dividing line between two distinct legal planes that the system had confounded for years.

II. The Foundational Distinction: Registration and Economic Rights as Separate Planes

The CAS Panel, chaired by Professor Massimo Coccia and composed of José Juan Pinto and Hugo Mario Pasos, addressed the central question with a clarity that contrasts with the opacity of FIFA’s prior decisions.

The starting point was a question of apparent technicality but of structural consequences: does the principle of uniqueness of federative registration prevent two clubs from sharing the economic rights over the same player?

The Panel began by recognizing FIFA’s argument — according to which the rules require a player to be registered to play for a single club — but rejected its logical consequence. In paragraph 27 of the award, it stated:

“The Panel agrees that this is a basic principle of FIFA regulations; however, it considers that this requirement does not prevent two clubs from distributing among themselves the economic rights related to a player, provided that the player is under an employment contract with one of them and expressly consents to such distribution.” — CAS 2004/A/635, § 27

From that premise, the Panel formulated in paragraph 28 the distinction that today sustains the entire legal architecture of the transfer market:

“In the Panel’s opinion, a fundamental legal distinction must be established in professional football between the registration of a player and the economic rights related to that player: the registration of a professional player with a club and before the relevant national federation fulfills the administrative function of certifying, within the federative system, that only that club is authorized to field said player during a given period; evidently, such federative registration is only possible if there is an employment contract between the club and the player; a club that holds an employment contract with a player may transfer, with the player’s consent, the rights derived from that contract to another club in exchange for a sum of money or other consideration, and those contractual rights are what are referred to as economic rights over a player’s services; this commercial transaction is only legally possible with respect to players who are under contract, since players who are not contractually bound — so-called free agents — may be hired by any club freely, without any economic rights being involved.” — CAS 2004/A/635, § 28

And in paragraph 29, the operative conclusion:

“In accordance with the above distinction, while a player’s registration cannot be simultaneously shared between different clubs — a player can only play for one club at a time —, economic rights, being ordinary contractual rights, may be partially transferred and, consequently, distributed among different holders. Therefore, the Panel considers that the Player Status Committee was correct in deeming it incompatible with FIFA regulations for a player to be registered at the same time with two different clubs, but erred in stating that two clubs cannot share the economic rights derived from a player’s employment contract.” — CAS 2004/A/635, § 29

The strength of this construction lies not only in what it affirms, but in what it separates. Federative registration is an institution of administrative nature: indivisible, exclusive, and functional to the organization of competition. Economic rights, on the other hand, are of contractual nature: divisible, transferable, and susceptible to multiple ownership. Both planes coexist but do not merge.

The Panel also noted a decisive element: neither the 1997 nor the 2001 FIFA Regulations contained an express prohibition of such agreements, and FIFA’s own representative at the hearing was unable to point to a specific provision that proscribed them.

In the same vein, the Panel was emphatic in rejecting any notion of “federative rights” that implied the possibility of binding the player without his consent. In paragraph 32 of the award, it held:

“For the sake of clarity, the Panel wishes to specify that, while it accepts the aforementioned notion of economic rights, it considers unacceptable and inapplicable the differentiated notion of federative rights — insofar as such expression may be interpreted to mean that a club could bind and control a player without his express consent, solely by virtue of a federation’s regulations. Indeed, the Panel considers that such sporting regulations are contrary to fundamental universal principles of labor law and, therefore, inapplicable on grounds of public policy. In other words, in the Panel’s view, the player’s consent is always indispensable when clubs carry out operations affecting his employment relationship and/or his transfer.” — CAS 2004/A/635, § 32

This is not a terminological clarification. It is a structural limit: the player is not an object of the system, but a subject of the legal relationship. From this reasoning derive three dogmatic consequences of permanent application:

1. Economic rights do not constitute a real right over the player, but rather a patrimonial expectation conditioned upon a future transfer.
2. Their existence presupposes a valid federative registration and, in the professional context, a current employment contract, to which they are accessory.
3. Their divisibility does not violate the principle of uniqueness of registration, because it operates on a different legal plane from that of sporting eligibility.

III. The Problem the Award Left Open: Economic Rights in Amateur Football

The doctrine of CAS 2004/A/635 was built on an explicit premise: economic rights presuppose the existence of an employment contract. The Panel was clear in stating that this commercial transaction is only legally possible with respect to players who are under a contractual bond, insofar as players free of contractual obligations may be hired by any club without any economic component associated with their transfer.

This formulation was fully coherent with the context of the case: Posse was a professional player bound by an employment contract. However, it left unresolved a central question that the practice of South American football — as demonstrated in Part II of this series — faced recurrently: can an economic right exist over an amateur player, who lacks an employment contract and whose sole connection is of a federative nature?

The question was not abstract. It was the question underlying hundreds of sporting agreements executed in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay between development clubs and acquiring clubs regarding players who, at the time of signing, retained amateur status.

The answer did not come from the regulation. It came from litigation. And, in this case, from a Colombian dispute that ultimately was resolved in Lausanne.

IV. TAS 2019/A/6524: The Extension of the Doctrine to Amateur Football

On 27 February 2012, Club Deportivo Leonel Álvarez and Club Atlético Nacional entered into a definitive transfer contract for the rights of player Marlos Moreno Durán. The first clause of the contract stated:

“CLUB LEONEL ÁLVAREZ definitively transfers with cost to ATLÉTICO NACIONAL, one hundred percent (100%) of the sporting and federative rights and seventy percent (70%) of the economic rights of THE PLAYER.” — Transfer Contract, Clause One, reproduced in TAS 2019/A/6524, § 5

At the time of the contract’s execution, the player had amateur status. There was no employment relationship whatsoever between him and Club Deportivo Leonel Álvarez.

On 5 August 2016, Atlético Nacional transferred the player to Manchester City for a fixed sum of USD 6,629,521, with contingent variable payments that could raise the total value of the transaction to up to USD 20,000,000. Nacional made an initial payment to Club Deportivo Leonel Álvarez corresponding to the agreed percentage, but subsequently ceased to comply with its obligations, arguing that the contract lacked an object insofar as the player was an amateur at the time of its execution.

The Player Status Commission of the Colombian Football Federation upheld that thesis and dismissed the claim. The decision was appealed before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, in a proceeding in which the author of this analysis acted as counsel for the appellant.

The arbitral panel, chaired by Efraim Barak and composed of Andreu Camps i Povill and Kepa Larumbe, with Yago Vázquez Moraga as ad hoc secretary, began its analysis from the applicable regulatory framework. In particular, it highlighted that Article 5 of the FCF Player Statute defines registration as the act by which a footballer formally joins the federative system, and that Article 11 expressly regulates the transfer of amateur players. On that basis, the Panel concluded:

“Likewise, in both cases (amateur and professional player), the FCF Player Statute specifically regulates the situations in which the player sought to be registered is linked to a previous club, that is, that it is not his first registration nor, for whatever reason, has he broken his link with his club of origin. That is, the regulation governs the registration process derived from a transfer of a player (amateur or professional) between clubs.” — TAS 2019/A/6524, § 92

Regarding the object of the contract, the Panel was equally precise:

“In accordance with this logic, through the aforementioned Transfer Contract the Appellant definitively transferred to the Second Respondent the sporting rights of the Player, which, in the definition given by the respondent itself, consist of the exclusive right that Sports Clubs have to register, inscribe, or authorize the participation of a player whose transfer certificate corresponds to them, in accordance with the provisions of the relevant federation. In the Panel’s judgment, that would therefore be the object of the Transfer Contract, which, as such, would be perfectly valid, as the Appellant was, at the time of signing said agreement, the holder of the Player’s sporting rights, the Player being registered in its favor with DIFUTBOL since 2 March 2010.” — TAS 2019/A/6524, § 97

The central point of the award, however, lies in the express rejection of the thesis that economic rights can only exist in the presence of an employment relationship. In paragraph 100, the Panel held:

“The Panel does not share this opinion. First, the fact that the Second Respondent has already paid the Appellant a price for the sporting, federative, and economic rights of the Player [...] it is perfectly possible to constitute, with inter partes effects (not vis-à-vis third parties), a co-ownership over the rights or economic expectations derived from the exclusive right to register, inscribe, and authorize the participation of a player. This would therefore be a right conceptualized by the parties (as a legal fiction) for the purpose of designating the credit expectation linked to and derived from primary rights (sporting rights), to which it would be linked and regarding which it would be dependent and accessory. And, ultimately, both parties would be co-holders of that economic expectation. In that sense, this would be perfectly lawful, as it is not prohibited by the applicable regulations (and what is not prohibited is permitted), nor does such agreement violate any legal norm or any third-party rights, nor does it contravene any fundamental legal principle, ultimately constituting a manifestation of the principle of contractual freedom of the parties.” — TAS 2019/A/6524, § 100

The Panel’s reasoning is of notable dogmatic consistency. It does not abandon the logic of the Vélez–Espanyol award; it preserves and projects it. If the structural foundation of economic rights is not the employment contract but the federative registration, then that foundation also exists in amateur football, where registration operates analogously, though devoid of a labor dimension.

What is transferred, in both cases, is not the person of the player. It is the patrimonial expectation associated with his circulation within the federative system. The Panel reinforced this conclusion by rejecting the argument that the absence of an employment relationship precluded the validity of the agreement:

“Moreover, if we accept for dialectical purposes that such economic rights could only exist after the signing of an employment contract with the Player, the performance of the Transfer Contract would have been left to the discretion of the Second Respondent, which would render said transaction null, as it would suffice for the latter to register the Player as an amateur to evade compliance with the payment obligation of constant reference.” — TAS 2019/A/6524, § 102

The TAS ordered Club Atlético Nacional to pay Club Deportivo Leonel Álvarez the claimed amount as principal, plus interest at 5% per annum from 23 November 2017 until the date of effective payment, and the arbitration costs borne entirely by the Second Respondent.

V. What the Two Awards Build Together: A Dual Architecture

Read together, the awards CAS 2004/A/635 and TAS 2019/A/6524 do not merely resolve specific disputes. They progressively construct a legal architecture that makes it possible to understand the place of economic rights within the organized football system.

This is not an isolated category. It is a structure operating on the coexistence of two differentiated but functionally interdependent legal planes: the federative plane and the patrimonial plane.

The first — the federative plane — is articulated around registration. A player’s registration with a federation is not a neutral administrative formality: it is the act that incorporates him into the competition system and that attributes, in an exclusive and temporary manner, to a club the right to field him. This plane is indivisible, exclusive, and functional to the integrity of competition.

The second — the patrimonial plane — is built on the economic expectation derived from the player’s mobility within that same system. Here, what is ordered is not competition but value. Economic rights emerge precisely at this level: not as a power over the player, but as a participation in the benefits derived from an eventual transfer.

As stated, this distinction is not merely conceptual but structural. In this structure, federative registration operates as a prerequisite. It is not the employment contract that creates the player’s economic value, but his insertion into the federated system. The employment contract stabilizes, intensifies, and projects it over time, but does not constitute its origin. This understanding makes it possible to explain, without friction, phenomena that would otherwise be contradictory: the existence of economic rights in amateur football, the operability of training compensation and the solidarity mechanism with respect to players without a contract, and the possibility of structuring economic expectations before the player’s professionalization.

From there, the architecture is completed with a second rule: the indivisibility of registration does not exclude the divisibility of value. A player can only be registered for one club at any given time; however, the economic outcome of his eventual transfer may be distributed among multiple holders. As the Panel recognized in the award CAS 2004/A/635 (§ 31), in the absence of an express prohibition, these rights may be treated as assets and commercialized in accordance with applicable legal frameworks.

Upon this framework is projected a third structural element: the player’s consent. Not as a formality, but as a limit. The player is not an object of economic appropriation, but a subject of the legal relationship. Any construction that disregards his consent exceeds not only sporting regulations but the fundamental principles of labor law and public policy.

Finally, the architecture closes on the legal nature of economic rights. They do not constitute an autonomous regulatory category. They are, in essence, ordinary contractual rights: configurable by the parties, transferable, divisible, and dependent on the structure that supports them. This characteristic explains both their extraordinary flexibility and the difficulty of subjecting them to rigid typologies or a uniform regime.

What emerges from this construction is not an exception within the system. It is its internal logic. Arbitral jurisprudence, as we have seen, has done the work that the regulation avoided: not creating the figure, but giving it structure.

VI. What the Doctrine Has Not Yet Resolved

Every conceptual architecture has cracks. This one is no exception. Identifying them does not constitute a critique of the awards, but a dogmatic requirement for anyone seeking to operate with this figure in practice.

The first task, however, is not to identify tensions but to purge false problematic issues that have been imprecisely formulated in practice. Among them, the idea that economic rights could subsist autonomously after the extinction of the employment contract.

This premise must be discarded. Economic rights do not survive on their own: only what the parties have decided shall subsist, subsists.

Indeed, since CAS 2004/A/635, the jurisprudence has been consistent in recognizing that economic rights constitute ordinary contractual rights. Their existence and enforceability do not depend on an intrinsic quality of the player or on an autonomous regulatory category, but on the legal relationship from which they originate and on the terms in which they were agreed.

This understanding was deepened in CAS 2010/A/2098, Sevilla FC v. RC Lens, where the Tribunal specified that in professional football there is no “sale” of the player as a legal object. What exists is an operation structured around the employment relationship and its eventual assignment or termination, always mediated by the player’s consent.

From this perspective, the extinction of the employment contract does not pose a problem of “natural survival” of the economic right, but a strictly contractual question: its subsistence depends exclusively on its prior configuration.

The true point of tension does not lie, therefore, in the disappearance of the employment bond, but in the contractual configuration of the economic expectation. Insofar as these rights do not fall upon the player as an object, but upon a future economic result, their content, scope, and conditions of enforceability depend entirely on the design of the contract.

Having clarified this point, it is possible to identify the true cracks in the system.

The first is the indeterminacy of the object of economic rights. If, as established by CAS 2004/A/635, these constitute contractual rights, and as developed by CAS 2010/A/2098, their function is to capture the future valorization of the player, a structural question arises: what exactly is being transferred or shared?

Jurisprudential evolution has attempted to answer this question without managing to close it. The award TAS 2019/A/6524 (Leonel Álvarez) introduced a relevant shift by displacing the foundation of economic value from the employment contract to federative registration, thus allowing its recognition in amateur football. This line was subsequently reinforced in decisions such as CAS 2024/A/10814 (Linaje F.C. v. DIM), where the Tribunal recognized the enforceability of economic participations derived from agreements executed during the player’s developmental stages.

However, this evolution has not been accompanied by a closed dogmatic definition. The jurisprudence describes the effects of these rights but does not precisely delineate their object: in some cases they are presented as a participation in a transfer price; in others, as an expectation over a market value; and in others still, as hybrid mechanisms linked to the circulation of the player within the federative system.

The second crack concerns the actual scope of the player’s consent. In both CAS 2004/A/635 and CAS 2010/A/2098, consent appears as a structural prerequisite for validity. Nevertheless, the jurisprudence has not developed material standards regarding its content or the conditions under which it may be considered fully informed.

Practice has demonstrated that this consent can become an empty formality in contexts of contractual asymmetry, especially in markets where players lack adequate counsel or find themselves in positions of structural weakness. The system requires consent but does not guarantee its quality or the minimum conditions of its validity.

The third crack, perhaps the most relevant today, is the relationship between economic rights and multi-club ownership structures (MCO). The awards that gave rise to this doctrine were constructed in a context in which the holders of these rights were individual clubs or external third parties. The evolution of the market has introduced structures in which multiple clubs form part of the same economic group, transforming the logic of transfers.

In this new scenario, economic rights cease to be instruments of participation in transactions between independent entities and become integrated into dynamics of internal value circulation within the same business ecosystem. The TPO prohibition did not eliminate the underlying economic logic but displaced it toward more sophisticated structures that the conceptual framework constructed by the TAS has not yet fully managed to capture.

VII. Author’s Position: What the Complete Series Demonstrates

The awards analyzed represent the most consistent effort that the sports arbitral system has made to endow with coherence a figure that was born without a name and without a regulation. The foundational distinction of CAS 2004/A/635 between federative registration and economic rights is not only correct but structurally necessary. Its subsequent extension to amateur football by TAS 2019/A/6524 (Leonel Álvarez) does not constitute a rupture but a logical evolution: denying the existence of economic rights in developmental or amateur football would amount to depriving clubs that finance the development of talent of legal mechanisms to capture the value they generate.

However, what the complete series —from the right of retention in English football to contemporary arbitral consolidation— makes it possible to demonstrate is something different and more profound: economic rights are not a regulatory creation, but the result of a prolonged, discontinuous, and legally accidental historical evolution.

No one designed this figure. The market produced it.

First, in England, as a collateral effect of a system of control over player mobility. Then, in South America and Europe, as a deliberate financial instrument that made it possible to anticipate, distribute, and monetize the future value of sporting performance. When the conflict reached the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the arbitrators did not create the figure: they recognized it, ordered it, and described it with a degree of precision that the market had never required, precisely because it had functioned without it.

This trajectory has a doctrinal reach that persists to this day: the absence of a regulatory definition of economic rights is not an omission that should be corrected retrospectively. It is a structural datum that must be interpreted.

FIFA opted to limit without defining —through Articles 18bis and 18ter of the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players— not out of technical incapacity, but by a conscious regulatory decision: defining would have implied expressly assuming the historical tolerance of a practice whose consequences the system itself had not always managed to control, and, on the other hand, would allow the market itself to establish its impact.

In this context, the evolution of the system suggests that the next major controversy regarding economic rights will not arise from traditional disputes between clubs over transfer percentages. It will arise, rather, from the intersection between new forms of capital organization in football —investment funds, multi-club ownership structures— and the player’s legal position within that framework.

When that conflict arrives, the question will no longer be solely how the value of a transfer is distributed, but who, ultimately, controls the economic value of a federative registration.

And, as has been the case so far, the answer will likely not come from the regulation, but from arbitral jurisprudence.

The cycle that began on the football pitches of northern England in 1885 has not closed. It has simply changed form.

Juan Manuel Martinez Cartagena is a lawyer with a Master’s degree in international sports law from the University of Lleida, with institutional experience within Colombian professional football. He served as counsel for Club Deportivo Leonel Álvarez in the proceedings TAS 2019/A/6524. This is the third and final installment of the series “Economic Rights in Football: Origins, Practice, and Arbitral Doctrine”.

Case Law References:

• CAS 2004/A/635, RCD Espanyol de Barcelona S.A.D. v. Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield, award of 27 January 2005. Panel: Prof. Massimo Coccia (President), José Juan Pinto, Hugo Mario Pasos.
• CAS 2004/A/701, Sport Club Internacional v. Galatasaray SK, award of 2005.
• CAS 2010/A/2098, Sevilla FC v. RC Lens, award of 29 November 2010. Panel: Prof. Luigi Fumagalli (President), Stuart McInnes, Olivier Carrard.
• CAS 2019/A/6524, Club Deportivo Leonel Álvarez v. Federación Colombiana de Fútbol & Club Atlético Nacional, award of 24 March 2021. Panel: Efraim Barak (President), Andreu Camps i Povill, Kepa Larumbe. Ad hoc Secretary: Yago Vázquez Moraga.
• CAS 2024/A/10814, Linaje F.C. v. Deportivo Independiente Medellín (DIM), award of 2025.

Previous Articles in This Series:

• Martinez Cartagena, J.M. (2026). “The transfer pass as an accidental asset: how the right of retention inadvertently created the modern transfer market”. juanmanuelmartinezc.com. Part I of III.
• Martinez Cartagena, J.M. (2026). “The formation of the global economic rights market: genesis, expansion, and financial sophistication”. juanmanuelmartinezc.com. Part II of III.

This article is part of an ongoing doctrinal research on economic rights in football, to be published in book format as part of a broader work on the legal and economic structure of the global transfer market.