Newcastle takeover lawyer Nick De Marco has now spoken about Man City APT win

Monday saw confirmation of the outcome of the arbitration case between Manchester City and the Premier League.

The case which was heard in the summer was a separate case to the one Manchester City will face later this year regarding their alleged 115 Profit and Sustainability Rules breaches. Man City were instead making a case that the rules around Associated Party Transactions that were thrown together in fear after the Newcastle United takeover were anti-competitive.

As the results were announced yesterday both the Premier League and Manchester City tried to claim victory, but it was evident that changes are incoming which could benefit Newcastle.

Sports lawyer Nick De Marco, who was instrumental in pushing through the Newcastle takeover three years ago, was also representing Manchester City in their case against the Premier League.

Nick De Marco has hailed some of the incoming changes as 'significant'

Now that the outcome is public, De Marco has spoken about the result posting a lengthy post on X in which he claimed that the parts of the APT rules that have been deemed unlawful are 'significant'.

"Today we have finally been able to read the written reasons in the MCFC v PL arbitration about the legality of the PL’s Associated Party Transaction Rules (‘APT’) and their application.

"As is often the case with lawyers, both sides have declared victory. The truth is somewhere in between, with each side winning on different issues. The fact, however, that parts of the PL’s APT Rules have been declared unlawful is significant. Just a few days after the European Court found parts of FIFA’s RSTP were unlawful, and coming not long after the ESL case in Europe (finding FIFA and UEFA rules to be unlawful), and the decision of an FA Rule Arbitral Tribunal that The FIFA and FA’s cap on football agents fees was unlawful, the case represents another example of the increasing tendency of courts and tribunals to hold sports regulators to closer scrutiny than has previously been the case the – in particular where economic activity is involved and where issues of freedom of movement and competition law arise. In addition, some of MCFC’s ‘wins’ in the APT case were based on English public law principles of procedural fairness."

How long until we see some big sponsorship deals at Newcastle?

It may still be a few days at least to work out exactly how this will affect Newcastle and whether they can start making deals with PIF-owned companies for lucrative sponsorship deals.

We have speculated that the big reason why Newcastle's training kit and ground, as well as the stadium, have so far gone without a main sponsor is that they were awaiting the outcome of this case.

It does sound like the restrictions have at least been relaxed now, so we could see a couple of big deals in the near future which should go directly towards creating PSR headroom and allowing the Magpies to spend more money on players. At least we hope so.