DOCTRINAL ANALYSIS · THE CASE · PART II OF III

The Formation of the Global Economic Rights Market: Genesis, Expansion, and Financial Sophistication

Author: Juan Manuel Martinez Cartagena
Date: March 2026
Series: Economic Rights in Football: Origin, Practice, and Arbitral Doctrine
Technical Level: High — sports lawyers, academics, football investors
Suggested Citation: Martinez Cartagena, J.M. (2026). "The formation of the global economic rights market: Genesis, expansion, and financial sophistication". juanmanuelmartinezc.com. Part II of III.

In Part I, I explained that the pase (the transfer of a player) as a patrimonial asset was not the result of a deliberate regulatory design, but rather the unintended side effect of the English retain and transfer system. The 1995 Bosman ruling eliminated post-contractual compensation for clubs holding the federative registration but preserved the player's economic value intact during the term of their contract.

What remained—that residual, current, and negotiable value—constituted precisely the object that, in South America, had already begun to be fragmented, distributed, and traded among multiple actors long before any arbitral tribunal defined it with conceptual precision.

The category of economic rights, initially conceived as a patrimonial division of the transfer value, evolved in less than three decades from a marginal contractual tool to establishing itself as a specialized international market. This market developed its own dynamics, incorporated transnational financial actors, articulated sophisticated financing mechanisms, and generated profound regulatory consequences.

This chapter addresses this phenomenon: the formation of the global market for economic rights, understood as an autonomous financial ecosystem, whose operational logic responds more to structures typical of capital markets and private equity than to classical sports law.

The analysis is structured around four fundamental dimensions:

The emergence of the South American market, as the first functional space for the economic circulation of economic rights.
The European expansion, characterized by the introduction of investment funds, offshore vehicles, and global financial management models.
The transformation of TPO (Third-Party Ownership) into a systemic problem, derived from perverse incentives and interference in sporting integrity.
The regulatory collision following the FIFA ban, which did not eliminate the phenomenon but displaced external influence towards new corporate architectures and indirect mechanisms of economic control.

I. South America as the First Functional Market: Economic Dynamics, Liquidity, and Specialization

South America was not the historical origin of the concept—analyzed in Part I—but it was the first functional market in which economic rights were systematically used as a structural financing mechanism.

As Professor Gustavo Abreu explains, the expression was adopted for contractual convenience to describe a reality that the market itself had empirically constructed:

"When transfers of footballers were made from club to club, the federative rights or the federative registration of the footballer were assigned, since the assignee could be their owner. When these operations began to be carried out in favor of physical or legal persons (other than clubs), what actually began to be assigned was the future credit of an eventual transfer, that is, the economic proceeds of the footballer's transfer to another club.

As previously stated, for reasons of convenience, when drafting contracts, the expression 'economic rights' has been used to designate the proceeds of a footballer's transfer, also called, by custom, the assignment of 'federative rights' or 'transfer rights'. Some years ago, for economic reasons, clubs began to dispose of this capital in advance of the footballer's transfer through an assignment of credit which, being subject to an uncertain event, is conditional or eventual.

The object of the assignment is the economic result of the future transfer of the footballer, which according to the will of the assigning club can be total or partial, and the condition that must be met is that the player is effectively transferred. The assignor, due to the aforementioned, can only be a football club affiliated with a federation, and the assignee can be any physical or legal person with the capacity to contract." — El Fútbol y su ordenamiento jurídico: Origen en Inglaterra y su implantación en Argentina. Gustavo Abreu. Pages 329 and 330.

Latin America pioneered the use of investment funds in professional football. Various sources place the first operations of this type in the late 1990s in Argentina. Since then, at least eleven investment funds have participated in hundreds of footballers globally, including young talents who would later become elite figures.

Three structural factors explain why this figure consolidated in South America before any other market:

Structurally negative liquidity of clubs, characterized by recurrent deficits and cash restrictions.
Anticipation of the future value of talent as a primary financial asset.
Limited access to formal bank credit, which incentivized alternative financing solutions.

In this context, economic rights became a functional tool to meet immediate needs: payment of salary arrears, coverage of tax liabilities, financing of basic infrastructure, and even daily operational sustenance.

1. The Argentine Ecosystem: Regulated Funds and Mass Participation

Argentina offers one of the first formal and sophisticated examples of this model. In 1997, Club Atlético Boca Juniors—under the presidency of Mauricio Macri—structured a Common Investment Fund (FCI) aimed at financing the acquisition of high-level players and consolidating a competitive sporting project on a continental scale.

The Argentine National Securities Commission approved this instrument on December 5, 1996. The fund managed to gather approximately 1,500 investors, whose shares even traded on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, forming a diversified portfolio of footballers.

With these resources, Boca Juniors incorporated players like Martín Palermo, Guillermo and Gustavo Barros Schelotto, Walter Samuel, among others, who would later form part of one of the club's most successful eras.

The operational mechanism was clear:

The fund financed the acquisition of percentages of the players' economic rights.
The club incorporated the footballers into its squad.
In a future transfer, the fund recovered its investment plus a proportional return, while the club retained the remaining percentage.

According to reports from the time—cited by the author—the scheme allowed Boca Juniors to optimize its financial structure without compromising its own capital:

"Although it waived a part of the future profits, it obtained US$15.4 million in sales and received US$14.1 million from the fund for reinforcements, additionally generating about US$29.6 million in net profit on the final balance sheet of the project. Potential losses were absorbed by investors: if a player was transferred below his initial cost, the loss fell on the FCI." — La Nación, “En el fondo ganaron todos”, available at: https://www.lanacion.com.ar/deportes/futbol/en-el-fondo-ganaron-todos-nid531625 (accessed: November 13, 2025).

After approximately four years of operation, the so-called "Fondo Xeneize" was liquidated around 2001, with a return of close to 15% in dollars for the unitholders.

The success of the model incentivized replication attempts by clubs like River Plate and Racing Club, though without equivalent results, primarily due to the absence of comparable financial guarantees. In Boca's case, Macri's personal backing—estimated at approximately US$20 million—was decisive for the project's viability.

Despite initial resistance—including legal challenges in 1998—the model was ultimately validated, marking the beginning of the institutionalization of investment funds in Argentine football.

2. Brazil and the Industrialization of the Model: From "Parcerias" to DIS–Neymar

In Brazil, the model's development followed a parallel trajectory, although initially less formalized. During the 1990s, various clubs established “parcerias”—strategic alliances with private companies—to finance their squads.

One of the paradigmatic cases was the association between Parmalat and Palmeiras, which constituted one of the first structural integrations between a multinational and a football club in the country. Subsequently, international funds like Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst participated in operations linked to clubs like Corinthians, evidencing the growing internationalization of capital in Brazilian football.

The turning point occurred with the creation, in 2007, of DIS (Departamento de Investimentos em Sports), a fund driven by businessmen Delcir and Idi Sonda. DIS operated as a private vehicle specialized in acquiring the economic rights of young footballers, eventually holding stakes in approximately 70 players.

Among them were figures such as Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, Juan Jesus, André Santos, and Paulo Henrique Ganso.

The fund gained international notoriety following the litigation arising from Neymar's transfer to FC Barcelona, in which it claimed participation in undeclared capital gains. However, its structural relevance lies in having consolidated an aggressive and systematic investment model in the Brazilian market.

By the mid-2000s, it was common practice for Brazilian clubs to assign percentages of players—especially youth players—to private investors in exchange for immediate liquidity. These agreements, formally contracted, stipulated that the investor would receive a portion of the value of a future transfer, while the club maintained the federative rights and the residual economic percentage.

3. Uruguay and the Professionalization of the Intermediary-Investor

In Uruguay—and in other smaller-scale South American markets—the model adopted a different configuration. Instead of structured funds, the figure of the intermediary-investor emerged, whose influence became decisive.

The most representative case is that of businessman Francisco "Paco" Casal, who, through various corporate structures, financed and acquired economic rights over a large number of Uruguayan footballers starting in the 1990s.

In this model, economic rights did not remain with the clubs, but were captured by private actors who, in many cases, conditioned transfer decisions.

An illustrative example is that of midfielder Cristian "Cebolla" Rodríguez, whose 2005 transfer from Peñarol to Paris Saint-Germain generated contractual controversy. His subsequent arrival at Benfica on a free transfer is explained by the ownership of his economic rights by the investment group led by Casal, which sought to revalue the player in a more competitive market.

Uruguay, therefore, did not develop an institutional fund model, but rather a structure based on agents with financing capacity and economic control. The underlying logic was the same—anticipating the future value of talent—but the legal architecture responded to a hybrid figure for which sports law lacked, at that time, a precise conceptual category.

II. Europe as a Financial Accelerator: Funds, Agents, and Offshore Structures

If South America allowed the birth of negotiations concerning economic rights and the intervention of third-party investors, Europe was the space where the figure became sophisticated. Not through conceptual innovation, but because the European market—with greater liquidity, greater media visibility, and significantly higher sums—attracted more complex structures, offshore vehicles, and actors with a much greater capacity for value extraction.

1. Portugal: The Regulated European Laboratory

The Portuguese experience regarding investment in economic rights can be read as a sequence of three models: the public and regulated fund First Portuguese Football Players Fund, largely linked to Sporting CP; the network of private vehicles and super-agents that operated around FC Porto; and the in-house institutional fund of SL Benfica.

Together, these three cases show how Portugal became the central laboratory of modern TPO in Europe, under a legal framework that tolerated the participation of third parties and allowed the channeling, through formalized and legally approved structures, of economic ownership over players.

The First Portuguese Football Players Fund was a pioneering public investment fund, managed by Orey Financial, established in 2002 and supervised by the CMVM (Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários). Its design included sections or sub-funds per club: the Sporting CP Section (FP Football Sporting), established on January 31, 2002; the Boavista Section (FP Football Boavista), established on October 31, 2002; and the FC Porto Section (FP Football Porto), established on May 21, 2004.

The Sporting CP Section was the most influential of the fund. Among the players whose economic rights were totally or partially included were Cristiano Ronaldo, Ricardo Quaresma, Hugo Viana, Carlos Martins, João Pinto, Rui Jorge, Dani, Paulo Costa, Luís Filipe, and Rodrigo Tello, all of them strategic assets of the academy and the club's sporting project. The investment allowed Sporting to generate immediate liquidity during a period of financial fragility. The departure of Quaresma to FC Barcelona and the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Manchester United in 2003 produced a substantial increase in the net asset value of this section and confirmed the profitability of the model for its investors.

The Boavista Section incorporated relevant footballers from a club that had just won the Portuguese League in 2001, being one of the few champions other than the "Big Three". Its portfolio mainly included Éder Gaúcho, Yuri, and Jocivalter Liberato. The growth of this section was more modest, largely because Boavista did not make large-scale transfers and, furthermore, in the following years entered a profound financial and institutional crisis.

The FC Porto Section was probably the one that produced the highest return in the short term. It coincided with the club's golden era, including winning the UEFA Champions League in 2004. The portfolio included Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Deco, Pedro Mendes, Derlei, Carlos Alberto, Maniche, Costinha, and Nuno Valente. The FP Football Players Fund – Porto registered an appreciation of 37.82% as of September 30, 2004, attributed to the economic impact of the transfers of Deco, Pedro Mendes, Paulo Ferreira, and Ricardo Carvalho following the club's successful European season. This is one of the highest returns documented in the history of player funds in Europe, at least based on public CMVM reports.

A distinctive feature of FC Porto within the European ecosystem was having combined, simultaneously and progressively, regulated financial mechanisms with private investment vehicles—MSI, Doyen Sports, Robi Plus, Quality Sports Investments, and other instruments that orbited around the Iberian market between 2008 and 2016. That dual track made Porto a complex and paradigmatic case for understanding the evolution of TPO and, subsequently, TPI in Europe.

The 2004 European champion FC Porto constitutes an illustrative example. Several of its star players arrived through co-ownership schemes with investors. Brazilian forward Luís Fabiano signed for the club with Porto acquiring merely 25% of his transfer rights, while the remaining 75% stayed in the hands of Global Soccer Investment, a circumstance that would become visible upon his subsequent transfer to Sevilla FC. The Argentine Lucho González arrived through a similar structure: external investors from Global Soccer Agencies (GSA) financed a relevant part of his operation. In 2007, facing an offer from Everton, Porto was forced to repurchase the 50% it did not own in order to fully control the operation. GSA also retained 50% of the economic rights of Lisandro López, confirming that several of the club's key players were divided between the sports entity and private funds.

These structures were not limited to the Portuguese market. GSA and affiliated companies also appeared in the Tevez–Mascherano–West Ham operation, where the firm featured as the owner of a portion of Javier Mascherano's economic rights, alongside Media Sports Investment and other entities.

The so-called Porto model relied less on a single, public, and regulated fund, and more on a network of private vehicles and bilateral contracts between the club and companies linked to agents or investors, which financed part of the transfer cost, retained high percentages of the economic rights—sometimes exceeding those of the club itself—and secured repurchase clauses or participation in future capital gains. From a regulatory point of view, these schemes were much less transparent than listed funds, as there was no consolidated public information, and knowledge of their operation arrived piecemeal through corporate press releases, leaks, or scandals stemming from litigation and judicial decisions.

The third Portuguese model is represented by the Benfica Stars Fund, created on September 30, 2009, and managed by ESAF — Espírito Santo Fundos de Investimento Mobiliário S.A., an entity linked to the Espírito Santo Group. Unlike the Argentine case of Boca Juniors, this was a closed-end fund, aimed solely at large investors. Its purpose was to finance the acquisition of federative and economic rights of players who would join the professional squad, participating in return in the benefits derived from future transfers.

The Benfica Stars Fund intervened in emblematic operations of the decade, among them those of Ángel Di María to Real Madrid, David Luiz to Chelsea, and Fábio Coentrão to Real Madrid. The fund ceased operations in 2014 when Benfica decided to repurchase the remaining units for approximately 29 million euros, in a context coinciding with the Banco Espírito Santo crisis and the tightening of the international regulatory climate.

Together, these three experiences make Portugal the central laboratory of modern TPO in Europe: an ecosystem in which a public fund, a private network of agents and investors, and an institutional club fund coexisted simultaneously. The country anticipated both the financial appeal of economic rights—capable of sustaining competitive sporting models—and the risks that would later justify their global prohibition: the fragmentation of the player's economic ownership, third-party influence in sporting decisions, and the structural dependence of clubs on external capital.

2. Spain: Internal Deregulation and Financial Dependence

In the early 2000s, Spanish clubs, affected by severe liquidity and debt problems, adopted third-party ownership as a financing tool. A 2013 KPMG report confirms that, in Spain's First Division, at least five clubs and around 25 players were subject to TPO agreements, representing between 5% and 8% of the total player market value and approximately 4.8% of registered footballers.

Spanish agreements were concentrated in medium-sized clubs with financial difficulties. Investors usually held between 10% and 50% of the economic rights and demanded returns of 8% to 10%, justified by the high risk and the lack of traditional guarantees.

This expansion was not accompanied by a national rule expressly enabling the figure, nor by a regulation that precisely defined it. Rather, it emerged from the combination of three factors: the existence of an internal regulatory vacuum regarding who could own a player's economic rights; the economic crisis and restrictions on bank credit, which pushed clubs to seek alternative financing; and the entry of specialized funds into the purchase of percentages on future transfer revenues.

The financial situation of Spanish clubs between 2007 and 2011 helps understand the context. As of June 2011, 80% of First Division clubs had negative working capital, and approximately half of the First and Second Division clubs had entered insolvency proceedings. A substantial part of the debt was concentrated in obligations to the Public Treasury and Social Security. Added to this was an extreme inequality in the distribution of television rights: the individual sales system disproportionately favored Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, while the rest of the clubs fought over a significantly lower remainder. In that scenario, investment funds acquiring economic rights appeared as an alternative financing route.

Quality Sports Investments (QSI) was the first major systematic TPO vehicle with a visible impact on Spanish football. It was a chain of funds and companies primarily based in Jersey and Ireland—Quality Sports Investments LP I-V, Quality Sports Investments Fund Ltd., Quality Football Ireland Ltd., Quality Football Ireland III-IV—used to acquire the economic rights of footballers from European clubs. Various journalistic and financial investigations identify Jorge Mendes and Peter Kenyon—former chief executive of Manchester United and Chelsea—as central figures linked to the fund. The Guardian described QSI as a vehicle advised by Mendes and Kenyon, relying on internal sources and documentation sent by clubs to supervisory authorities.

The paradigmatic case of QSI's landing in Spain was the signing of goalkeeper Roberto Jiménez by Real Zaragoza, arriving from SL Benfica, in the summer of 2011. The operation generated a strong impact because Zaragoza was in insolvency administration, yet Benfica reported a transfer of 8.6 million euros to the Portuguese CMVM. The key emerged when analyzing the breakdown: Real Zaragoza only acquired the federative rights of the player and paid 86,000 euros for them; the rest of the price, over 8.5 million euros, was covered by a company that kept the player's economic rights:

"The signing of Jiménez caused surprise, since his new club had requested the administration of creditors to face a net debt of 110 million euros. As a listed company, Benfica was obliged to declare to shareholders how the insolvent buyer would pay for the player. It turned out that Zaragoza paid 86,000 euros, and the remaining balance, more than 8.5 million euros, was paid by an anonymous investment fund that will retain the player's economic rights. The Spanish newspaper El País has stated that the fund is Quality Sports Investment and that, according to various sources, it is controlled by the Portuguese agent Jorge Mendes and the former CEO of Manchester United and Chelsea, Peter Kenyon. Kenyon has confirmed that he and Mendes act as advisors to the fund. QSI is domiciled in the offshore jurisdiction of Jersey, which means that the identity of its investors is unknown." — The Guardian, August 11, 2011

From the dogmatic point of view of sports law, this episode reveals three features that would later be repeated in numerous cases: first, the functional separation between federative rights—in the hands of the club—and economic rights—in the hands of a foreign fund; second, the recourse to opaque vehicles domiciled in offshore jurisdictions, which hinder control over the identity and suitability of investors; and, third, the use of TPO as an emergency financing mechanism that allows a formally insolvent club to access high-cost footballers.

The relationship of Atlético de Madrid with QSI and its subsidiary Quality Football Ireland (QFI) constitutes another particularly relevant chapter. The documentation disclosed by Football Leaks and reproduced by Spanish media shows that, in January 2013, the club entered into a contract with Quality Football Ireland IV Limited (QFI IV), domiciled in Dublin, the object of which was the assignment of 30% of the economic rights of Jorge Resurrección "Koke", for a price of 3 million euros, a valuation that implied estimating 100% of the player at 10 million. The purpose of the operation was to partially settle a previous debt derived from the Eduardo Salvio case, which had generated a payment obligation of 5 million euros to QFI.

The contract incorporated clauses particularly relevant to the analysis of TPI: the obligation of Atlético to inform the fund about any negotiation concerning a possible transfer of Koke; the possibility of demanding compensation if the club rejected an offer that interested the fund, even without the transfer being consummated; and the investor's right to recover the 3 million plus an annual interest of 10% if the player renewed his contract. According to information disclosed by the press based on Football Leaks, Atlético's relationship with QFI was not limited to Koke: operations also appear concerning Saúl Ñíguez—40% of his economic rights for 1.5 million in March 2011—and Óliver Torres, with 25% of his rights for about 5 million euros.

On the international stage, the transfer of Diego Costa from Atlético de Madrid to Chelsea FC in 2014, through the payment of a release clause close to 38 million euros, clearly illustrates the full structure of the model. According to the press, Atlético reportedly received approximately half the amount, while the rest was distributed among different holders of economic rights: Sporting de Braga with 20%, Jorge Mendes with 10%, and Quality Sports Investments with the remaining portion, approximately 7.6 million euros. The international press has reiterated this case as one of the paradigmatic examples of TPO applied to an elite striker linked to LaLiga.

Doyen Sports Investments (DSI) constitutes the second major actor in Spanish TPO. Doyen was part of the Doyen Group, a conglomerate with a corporate base in the United Kingdom and an operational presence in Istanbul and London, whose main activity, before entering football, was concentrated in extractive sectors, chemicals, fertilizers, and hospitality. Journalistic investigations agree that the real core of power was composed of the so-called Arif clan, a family of Kazakh-Turkish origin who accumulated their fortune in the context of the industrial privatizations following the fall of the USSR.

Doyen Sports Investments, the sports branch of the group based in Malta, was born in 2011 and presented itself as an alternative source of financing for clubs in difficulty. The central figure in its launch was Nélio Lucas, a Portuguese native linked to sports marketing, who, according to the press, presented himself as a former employee of Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles and a disciple of agent Pini Zahavi.

Sporting de Gijón was the first paradigmatic case of Doyen in Spain. In September 2011, the club was dragging debts and lacked sufficient liquidity, having to pay 2 million euros to the Treasury. Doyen provided that money not as a traditional loan, but in exchange for assignment structures over the federative and economic rights of players. The terms of the contract—leaked by Football Leaks—illustrate the harshness of the model: Sporting had to return the equivalent of five times the initial sum, that is, 10 million euros, through future transfers.

Initially, Doyen would receive 50% of the income from transfers of designated players until reaching 5 million euros; once that first threshold was surpassed, its participation would be reduced to 40% until reaching 6 million; and subsequently to 30% until accumulating 7 million. The remaining 3 million to complete the 10 would be covered by sales of any other player in the squad, at a rate of 20% for Doyen. Even more significant: the fund ensured it was the exclusive agent of Sporting, so that all operations to buy, sell, and temporarily loan players had to be channeled through it. In practice, the fund not only participated in the transfer flows but also directly influenced the sporting management of the club.

If an offer arrived for any of those players equal to or greater than the agreed value, Sporting was obliged to accept it. If it refused, it had to pay Doyen compensation equivalent to the rejected offer. If a player renewed their contract, Doyen could demand immediate payment as if the transfer had occurred. The outcome was revealing: Sporting was relegated in 2012 and Doyen recovered barely 3.5 million euros, far from the projected 10 million. The case showed how these structures could alleviate a momentary financial urgency, but at the cost of mortgaging future sporting assets and subordinating strategic decisions to external economic interests.

Atlético de Madrid also resorted to Doyen. The most notable operation was the signing of Radamel Falcao in 2011. The club paid around 40 million euros to FC Porto, despite its delicate financial situation and a debt to the Treasury exceeding 120 million euros. Subsequent documents revealed that Doyen financed 55% of that purchase—about 22 million euros—in exchange for an equivalent percentage of the player's economic rights. Two years later, in 2013, Atlético transferred Falcao to AS Monaco for a figure close to 60 million, and Doyen captured a substantial part of the capital gain. According to Javier Tebas, in his defense of TPO, both Falcao and Diego Costa were able to remain at Atlético thanks to these types of structures, as without the backing of investors the club would hardly have been able to retain them.

Doyen continued operating with Atlético. In 2013 it participated in the arrival of French midfielder Josuha Guilavogui, acquiring 50% of his economic rights for 5 million euros. At Sevilla FC, then presided over by José María del Nido, Doyen facilitated the 2012 signing of Geoffrey Kondogbia from Lens for 3 million euros, acquiring 50% of his economic rights. Kondogbia quickly revalued and in 2013 was transferred to AS Monaco for 20 million, of which nearly 10 million corresponded to Doyen.

Football Leaks also revealed that Doyen not only financed signings at Sevilla, but that in January 2013, President Del Nido himself signed a personal contract with Nélio Lucas through which the fund granted him 500,000 euros privately, with an annual interest of 10%. This fact showed the extent to which the relationship between the fund and certain executives could spill over beyond the strictly institutional level.

According to figures published later, between 2011 and 2014 Doyen invested around 19.3 million euros in TPO operations with Spanish clubs and had obtained approximately 15.8 million in profit, representing a return of close to 81.5%.

3. France: The Early Prohibition

In France, the development was different from that of Portugal or Spain. The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) banned TPO agreements even before the global ban introduced by FIFA. Article 221 of the LFP Administrative Regulations, in its 2011 version, established:

"A club may not enter into agreements with legal persons, except another club, or with physical persons, whose object, directly or indirectly, results in the transfer or acquisition, for the benefit of said persons, of all or part of the assets derived from the determination of the various indemnities to which it may be entitled on the occasion of the transfer of one or more of its players."
— Article 221, LFP Administrative Regulations (2011)

Despite that ban, a report commissioned by the LFP itself in 2014 revealed that 47% of French clubs had had a relationship with players subjected to TPO schemes, normally arriving from South America.

Cases such as that of Eliaquim Mangala—who discovered through a France 2 report that a fund owned 33% of his economic rights while he played for FC Porto—or that of Yacine Brahimi—who learned, after his transfer to Porto, that 80% of his economic rights had been assigned to Doyen Sports without his knowledge—illustrated not only the opacity of these contracts, but also the fact that the players themselves could be unaware of who participated in the economic exploitation of their market value. These revelations reinforced public and institutional rejection of the practice in France.

4. England: The West Ham Case and the Regulatory Trigger

In the English context, there is no solid documentary evidence of a structured TPO market prior to the West Ham–Tevez–Mascherano case, linked to Media Sports Investment (MSI) between 2006 and 2007. Until then, the Football Association only had Rule C.1(b)(iii), which stated that no club could enter into a contract enabling another party to acquire the ability to materially influence the club's policies or the performance of its teams in matches and competitions.

As Daniel Geey has explained in his analysis of the case, until August 4, 2009, that was the only FA rule that indirectly affected TPO.

When it was revealed that Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano had arrived at West Ham under a structure in which MSI retained the economic rights and maintained certain powers over decisions related to the players, the Premier League imposed on the club a fine of £5.5 million, the highest in its history up to that point. Subsequently, in August 2009, the FA introduced its FA Third Party Ownership Regulations, requiring that, before the registration of a player, the Association verify that no third party owned their economic rights.

In this way, England became the first European country to expressly and systematically ban TPO, several years before FIFA itself adopted a global ban.

5. Conclusion

In my opinion, Europe did not create the logic of economic rights, but it did take it to its maximum financial expression. If in South America the figure emerged as a response to necessity, in Europe it transformed into a transnational investment infrastructure, connected with agents, funds, offshore jurisdictions, and value maximization strategies.

Portugal demonstrated its regulated viability. Spain evidenced its expansion in contexts of economic fragility. France anticipated institutional rejection. England, finally, produced the case that turned TPO into a global regulatory problem.

In that transition, economic rights ceased to be a peripheral contractual technique to become a device of power within the international transfer market.

III. TPO as a Systemic Problem: TPI and TPO According to the FIFA Definition

The process that led FIFA to intervene normatively was not sudden nor did it obey an isolated reaction. It was, rather, the result of a progressive accumulation of evidence surrounding two distinct, although closely related, phenomena: on the one hand, Third Party Ownership (TPO), understood as the patrimonial participation of third parties outside of associated football in the economic benefits derived from future transfers of players; and, on the other, Third Party Influence (TPI), that is, the ability of those third parties to influence—directly or indirectly—the sporting, contractual, or transfer decisions adopted by the clubs.

The distinction between the two categories is fundamental. While TPO alludes, essentially, to a problem of economic ownership and appropriation of transfer value, TPI refers to an even more sensitive risk: external interference in the decisional autonomy of the club, with potential impact on the integrity of the competition, institutional sporting policy, and the contractual freedom of the actors involved.

Precisely for this reason, FIFA's regulatory concern was not limited to the mere existence of third-party investors in the economic chain of football. The true turning point emerged when it became evident that the patrimonial participation of those external actors could translate into real influence power over the movement of players, the acceptance or rejection of offers, contractual renewals, and even the sporting planning of the affiliated entities.

The official FIFA Commentary to the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players accurately describes the historical origin of these practices and the reason explaining their progressive regulation:

"It is at this point where the historical commercial activities concerning economic rights and TPO originally surfaced: third-party investors would, against a payment, acquire an interest in the economic rights of a player, thereby speculating on the development of the player and being entitled to receive a payment if and when such player would be transferred against the payment of transfer compensation. The third-party investor would receive a payment corresponding to the proportion of economic rights held." FIFA Commentary on the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (2021)

This explanation is particularly relevant for two reasons. Firstly, because it acknowledges that the emergence of these mechanisms was not accidental, but a direct consequence of the progressive financing required by the transfer market. Secondly, because it evidences that the problem did not reside solely in the assignment of the player's future economic yield, but in the possibility that such assignment translated into the capacity for effective intervention over sporting decisions.

In this context, articles 18 bis and 18 ter of the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) were introduced to respond to differentiated realities that had consolidated in the market.

Article 18 bis, concerning Third Party Influence (TPI), is aimed at limiting the ability of a third party to influence the club's decisions. This influence can manifest through contractual clauses that condition the club's conduct regarding transfers. For example, if a fund owns 55% of a player's economic rights and the contract grants it the right to demand compensation in case the club rejects a transfer offer, that third party acquires, in practice, a direct economic pressure capacity over the sporting decision.

The contracts entered into by Doyen Sports Investments with Sporting de Gijón and Atlético de Madrid constitute paradigmatic examples of structures that generated this type of influence, by incorporating mechanisms that incentivized or forced certain market decisions.

Article 18 ter, on its part, addresses Third Party Ownership (TPO) in the strict sense, that is, the actual ownership of a fraction of the player's economic value by a third party outside the associative system. Unlike TPI, which focuses on the effects, TPO refers to the ownership structure that allows said effects to be produced.

FIFA's normative intervention did not aim to codify economic rights as an autonomous legal category—a step it deliberately avoided—but rather to preserve the integrity of the competition and the autonomy of the federative system against contractual structures that displaced the center of decision outside the realm of the club.

In this sense, the decision adopted on December 22, 2014, by which FIFA introduced article 18 ter to the RSTP, marked a definitive turning point. The global ban on TPO, coming into force on May 1, 2015, did not eliminate the underlying economic logic, but it did redefine the boundaries within which said logic could operate.

IV. The Regulatory Collision: The Complaint to the European Commission and the Paradox that Persists

The reaction to the ban imposed by FIFA was immediate and articulated by the very actors within the system. Far from being accepted as a peaceful measure to order the market, the incorporation of article 18 ter of the RSTP triggered a regulatory conflict of supranational dimension, in which, on the one hand, the federative logic of protecting sporting integrity clashed with, on the other, the principles of free competition inherent to European Union law.

In January 2015, the Spanish Professional Football League (LFP) and the Portuguese Professional Football League (LPFP) filed a joint complaint before the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission, questioning the compatibility of the TPO ban with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

The central argument of the leagues was structured around the idea that the ban constituted an unjustified restriction on free competition, to the extent that it prevented clubs from accessing alternative sources of financing and excluded from the market investors who, up until that point, had been operating legitimately within certain jurisdictions. From this perspective, TPO was not conceived as a systemic threat, but as a necessary financial instrument to ensure the economic sustainability of clubs with less access to capital.

The official statement from the leagues noted:

"The ban on TPOs constitutes an economic agreement that restricts the economic freedom of clubs, players, and third parties without any justification or proportionality. This ban harms clubs, mainly those with fewer economic resources, preventing them from sharing with third parties the economic rights of professional football players in their ranks, and from managing their financial obligations more prudently. This ban also harms the training of dozens of players, whose professional careers have been supported by the human, technical, and economic means of third parties. Finally, this ban totally excludes third parties from the management of footballers' economic rights, an activity they have been carrying out legitimately in the vast majority of professional leagues in the world to date. This restriction on free competition infringes Article 101 of the TFEU regarding the prohibition of anti-competitive agreements and Article 102 of the TFEU regarding FIFA's abuse of dominant position."

— Liga de Fútbol Profesional and Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional, Complaint to the European Commission, January 2015

The European Commission did not adopt a formal decision on the merits of the matter. However, the tension that this complaint highlighted was not only real, but remains structurally unresolved.

The TPO ban eliminated the most visible legal form of third-party participation in players' economic rights. It did not, however, eliminate the underlying economic logic that had given rise to these practices: the need to finance talent through external capital and the possibility of capturing value from its future transfer. That logic did not disappear. It shifted.

The capital that previously acquired percentages of economic rights began to migrate towards more sophisticated structures, in particular towards multi-club ownership (MCO) schemes, where the investor no longer participates in the value of a player in a fragmented manner, but moves to directly control the primary asset: the club that registers them.

From this perspective, contemporary MCO does not constitute a break with TPO, but its functional evolution under a different legal architecture. The same economic phenomenon—investment in talent with an expectation of future appreciation—is reconfigured in a regulatory environment that prohibits direct ownership over economic rights, but allows corporate control over the entities that hold them.

The paradox is evident: FIFA's regulatory intervention managed to eliminate a specific figure, but it failed to alter the structural incentives of the market. Consequently, the result was not the disappearance of the phenomenon, but its transformation towards less visible, more complex, and potentially more difficult to supervise forms.

In that transition, the system went from facing a problem of patrimonial fragmentation of the player to one of structural concentration of economic control in networks of interconnected clubs.

V. Author's Position: The Market as a Legal Argument

The history reconstructed in this article—from the Fondo Xeneize to the complaint before the European Commission—leads to a doctrinal implication that must be formulated with precision: when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was called upon to rule, starting in 2005, on the legal validity of economic rights, it did not create the figure.

It recognized it.

The market had built it decades in advance, and it had done so in a sufficiently consistent, repeated, and structured manner to generate legally enforceable patrimonial expectations.

Along these lines, as Pablo Barbieri argues, economic rights do not arise from a regulatory provision, but from the negotiating reality of the clubs. They constitute, more than a normative category, a functional creation of the market, arising from the need to finance sporting structures through the assignment of shares over future transfer benefits. Their legitimacy, therefore, does not derive from a rule enshrining them, but from a practice that consolidated them as a recurring economic instrument.

This premise has direct consequences for the interpretation of arbitral awards that will be addressed in Part III of this series. When the CAS Panel, in the case RCD Espanyol v. Vélez Sarsfield, stated that economic rights constitute ordinary contractual rights, it was not innovating the legal system or introducing an unprecedented category.

It was, in reality, translating a pre-existing economic practice into legal language.

What CAS describes—in terms of assignment of credits, conditional rights, or patrimonial expectations—had already been empirically constructed by actors such as the Fondo Xeneize, DIS, Paco Casal, the First Portuguese Football Players Fund, Quality Sports Investments (QSI), and Doyen Sports Investments.

The law, at this point, does not act as an originating source, but as an instance of recognition, systematization, and, eventually, limitation of a reality previously consolidated in the market.

From this perspective, the complete series is not solely a study of a legal figure. It is the reconstruction of a broader phenomenon: the history of a market that the law had to learn to interpret.

And in that process, one constant emerges clearly:

practice has been, systematically, several steps ahead of the rule.

The contemporary development of multi-club ownership (MCO) structures confirms that this cycle has not concluded. The ban on TPO did not eliminate the economic logic that sustained it; it simply forced its reconfiguration under new legal forms.

Therefore, any attempt at future regulation that seeks to effectively impact these phenomena cannot be limited to banning specific formal structures. It must, instead, understand the economic rationality that produces them.

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 professional Colombian football. Part III of this series analyzes the two CAS awards that turned this practice into doctrine: CAS 2004/A/635 and CAS 2019/A/6524, a case in which the author participated as counsel for the appellant.

Doctrinal References

Abreu, Gustavo. El fútbol y su ordenamiento jurídico: origen en Inglaterra y su implantación en Argentina. Buenos Aires: [Editorial], s.f., pp. 329–330.

Barbieri, Pablo C. “Los derechos económicos y sus diversos enfoques.” Sistema Argentino de Información Jurídica (SAIJ), October 28, 2013.
Available at: https://www.saij.gob.ar/pablo-carlos-barbieri-derechos-economicos-sus-diversos-enfoques-dacf130327-2013-10-28/123456789-0abc-defg7230-31fcanirtcod

Vuotto, Eduardo M. “Derecho deportivo: hacia un nuevo paradigma. Derechos económicos y federativos, relaciones de titularidad y cotitularidad, prohibiciones reglamentarias.” Estudio Vuotto, 2017.
Available at: https://www.estudiovuotto.com.ar/derecho-deportivo-hacia-un-nuevo-paradigma-derechos-economicos-y-federativos-relaciones-de-titularidad-y-cotitularidad-prohibiciones-reglamentarias

Lombardi, Rosa; Manfredi, Simone; Nappo, Fabio. “Third Party Ownership in the Field of Professional Football: A Critical Perspective.” Business Systems Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2014), pp. 32–47.
Available on SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2424897

Normative and Regulatory References

FIFA. Commentary on the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players. Zurich: FIFA, 2021.
Available at: https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/1442a4b2d0c567a8/original/Commentary-on-the-Regulations-on-the-Status-and-Transfer-of-Players.pdf

FIFA. Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP). Zurich: FIFA, 2024 edition, arts. 18 bis and 18 ter.

Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP). Administrative Regulations, art. 221 (2011). Paris: LFP.

The Football Association (FA). Third Party Ownership Regulations, in force since August 4, 2009. London: FA.

Premier League. Rules L34–L35 on Third Party Ownership, 2008/2009 season.

National Securities Commission (Argentina). Approval resolution of the Common Investment Fund of Club Atlético Boca Juniors, December 5, 1996.

CMVM — Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (Portugal). Reports on the First Portuguese Football Players Fund, 2002–2004.

Professional Football League (Spain) & Portuguese Professional Football League.
Complaint to the European Commission, Directorate-General for Competition, January 2015.

KPMG. Report on the transfer market in Spain and the use of TPO. 2013.

Documentary and Journalistic Sources:

Football Leaks. Documentation regarding Quality Sports Investments (QSI) contracts with Atlético de Madrid (January 2013) and operations of Doyen Sports Investments in Spanish football (2011–2014).
Reproduced by various media outlets, including: La FM, Mundo Deportivo, Sportyou, Plaza Deportiva, and La Vanguardia.

The Guardian. “Jorge Mendes and Peter Kenyon acting as advisers to QSI fund.” August 11, 2011.

Argentine Sports Press. Coverage of the Common Investment Fund of Club Atlético Boca Juniors (1997–2001).

Articles in this series:

Martinez Cartagena, Juan Manuel. (2026). The pase as an accidental asset: how the retain and transfer system unintentionally invented today's transfer market. juanmanuelmartinezc.com. Part I of III.

Martinez Cartagena, Juan Manuel. (2026). Economic rights in football: a doctrine built by arbitrators, not legislators. juanmanuelmartinezc.com. Part III of III.

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