The relationship between the sporting governing bodies and the EU authorities has long
been a tumultuous one. Sporting governing bodies have supported most of their
controversial decisions on the doctrine of the specificity of sports, under which it has been
hard to define a threshold for the legality of their actions. The introduction of Article 165
TFEU in 2009 and several prominent case law by the CJEU has helped to sustain this
unique sui generis status of lex sportiva in the EU. In this context, the financial issues for
clubs have arisen as one of the main topics in this controversial matter. This thesis seeks to
embrace the specific issue of players’ salaries in European football leagues, which have
considerably increased in the recent past, and the acceptance of salary caps by EU law.
Players’ salaries represent the largest component of operating costs to club owners and
salary caps place a limit on the amount of money that a club can spend on players’ salaries.
Salary caps are a unique area for social, economic and legal studies, and its impact has
been widely acknowledged. This thesis provides a legal assessment on the current structure
of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play Regulations, with the break-even rule being considered as a
soft type of salary cap, as well as a legal assessment on the eventual introduction of a hard
salary cap. It concludes that the current Financial Fair Play Regulations are most likely in
breach of EU law and that a hard salary cap will be a better candidate to qualify for an
exemption under EU law and be deemed as legal. Nevertheless, it also concludes that the
commonly known US hard salary caps are in fact soft types of salary caps and that the
introduction of a truly hard salary cap in European football would be an innovative
solution resulting in an uncertain legal assessment provided in a case-by-case analysis by
the CJEU
