Beyond the federation's walls: ROGON, third parties and the maturing of the Meca-Medina/Wouters doctrine

Introduction

Not since 2023, the year of European Superleague (ESL), has Luxembourg been this busy on sports: within a few months, Tondela was followed by ROGON and Others and RRC Sports. This post focuses on Case C-428/23 ROGON, decided by the Fifth Chamber on 9 July 2026 on a reference from the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH).1

ROGON deals with the German Football Association (Deutscher Fußball-Bund, DFB)'s rules on professional football players' agents – and with what happens when a federation's rulebook reaches beyond its own walls. The judgment confirms that the Meca-Medina/Wouters doctrine can apply to federation rules that regulate undertakings outside the federation.2Read alongside the Bundeskartellamt's closure of its '50+1' proceeding a month later, it also shows how the doctrine is being put to work at national level.3

Background

The ROGON dispute concerned the DFB's Reglement für Spielervermittlung (RfSV), in force since 1 April 2015.4The RfSV impose registration duties, bar agents from taking commission on an inward transfer out of a club's future transfer proceeds, ban commissions on transfers of minors and require disclosure of fees and payments to agents.5

Although addressed to clubs and players, the rules also imposed indirect obligations on players' agents. Three claimants, including ROGON, sought injunctive relief before the German courts, and the case eventually reached the BGH. The BGH noted that the Meca-Medina/Wouters exception had so far been applied only to regulations adopted by professional bodies on a legal basis or to rules on organising sporting activities and competitions. The RfSV, by contrast, produced effects on a market upstream of the sporting activity: that for the services of players' agents, who are not DFB members.6

The Meca-Medina/Wouters doctrine and what ROGON adds

The starting point

In Meca-Medina, drawing expressly on Wouters,7the ECJ held that certain (even purely) sporting rules may fall outside the prohibition of anti-competitive agreements under Art 101(1) TFEU where three requirements are met: a legitimate public-interest objective, necessity and proportionality.

Yet, that line of case law, especially ESL – which essentially centered around a battle of UEFA and FIFA against an ill-fated European breakaway tournament – concerned rules governing the sporting competition itself, ie who may organise it, who may take part and on what terms. What remained open was how far the Meca-Medina/Wouters doctrine reaches beyond the core set of rules governing the sporting competition itself.8 Can it also cover federation rules that regulate economic activities adjacent to, but separate from, the sport, and that bind operators outside the federation altogether? If so, do they have to be applied provision by provision or according to each rule's proximity to the sporting activity?9That is what the BGH asked the ECJ in ROGON.

What ROGON confirms and what ROGON adds

ROGON confirms that the Meca-Medina/Wouters exception can apply to federation rules that also govern the use of third-party services, provided that they (i) were adopted by the federation acting as an undertaking or association of undertakings and may affect trade between Member States; (ii) cannot be classified as restricting competition by object; and (iii) pursue legitimate public-interest objectives that are not in themselves anticompetitive, and are proportionate to them.10What ROGON adds to this framework emerges mainly from its treatment of the second and third conditions, beginning with the "by object" filter.

-        The "by object" filter as gatekeeper

In ESL, the Meca-Medina/Wouters doctrine was sharpened in one important respect: it cannot apply to restrictions by object, which can be exempted only under Article 101(3) TFEU.11By object restrictions are forms of coordination that are, by their very nature, harmful to normal competition. Tondela, a Portuguese no-poach case in the football sector, recently restated that this classification turns on content, context and objectives, without the need to examine, let alone prove, effects.12

On this second limb, ROGON largely restates existing case law – with one important addition. That the federation rules reach third parties (here, players' agents outside the DFB) neither makes them restrictive by object nor prevents them from being justified as such.13The Meca-Medina/Wouters exception can apply irrespectively whether the rules bind only the association's members or others as well.14

The ECJ does not say how the DFB's rules would fare under the by object test; that is left to the German courts. This contrasts with ESL, where the ECJ found that FIFA's and UEFA's prior-approval rules had an anticompetitive object in the absence of transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria, and with RRC Sports, where it indicated that (at least) certain FIFA agent rules may be restrictive by object.15 Notably, however, the English Football Association (FA) Tribunal found in 2023 that the FIFA Football Agent Regulations' Fee Cap and Pro Rata Payment Rules restricted competition by both object and effect under the UK Competition Act.16

-        Legitimate objective and proportionality

The third limb is where ROGON does most of its work. Recalling the familiar Meca-Medina/Wouters formula, the ECJ requires that the rules pursue one or more legitimate public-interest objectives that are not in themselves anticompetitive, that the means used are genuinely necessary, and that any inherent restrictive effect goes no further than necessary – in particular, that it does not eliminate competition.17

What the ECJ clarifies in ROGON is that the reach of the rules beyond the federation's membership is neutral at every step.18 That the RfSV also binds agents outside the DFB does not stop them from pursuing, or being capable of attaining, a legitimate objective. It does not, as such, rule out a finding that no equally effective alternative exists. Nor can it by itself defeat proportionality stricto sensu: that test depends on the nature of the objective, and affecting third parties does not, of itself, eliminate competition on their market.

Indeed, nothing in the Meca-Medina/Wouters case law requires justified rules to affect members only; extending obligations to third parties who deal with those members may be precisely what makes the objective achievable. The rationale is the 'ecosystem' reasoning familiar from the ECJ's recent sports cases. A federation may need to regulate the whole ecosystem it oversees because, in professional and semi-professional football, clubs, federations, players and agents must interact and, to some degree, cooperate. Agent rules cannot therefore be dismissed as unrelated to the integrity of competitions simply because agents feel their effects.19 Yet this reasoning has limits: in CAA Base, eg, the FA Tribunal seemingly excluded FIFA's agent fee cap from Wouters/Meca-Medina as regulating 'prices […] in a purely economic context'.20

The unit of analysis: rule by rule, or module by module?

The BGH's second question – provision by provision, or by each rule's proximity to the sporting activity?21 – gets a pragmatic answer in ROGON. Where provisions pursue different objectives or produce distinct effects, their proportionality must be examined separately, though not necessarily rule by rule: the relevant unit may be a set of provisions with a distinct objective or effect. Conversely, splitting up provisions that are indissociable or ancillary to one another would be artificial. And the ECJ rejected the referring court's proposed yardstick: how closely a provision is connected to the sporting activity, or to the federation's corporate purpose, does not determine the level of assessment.22

Outsiders welcome? How the Bundeskartellamt put ROGON to work

On 12 August 2026, barely a month after ROGON, the Bundeskartellamt closed its proceeding on the German Football League (Deutsche Fußball Liga, DFL)'s '50+1' rule. The rule limits investor control over Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga clubs by requiring, inter alia, a club's parent member association to hold 50 percent of the voting rights plus one.23The closure letter finds that the '50+1' rule may restrict competition by effect, not by object, and is in principle capable of benefiting from the Meca-Medina/Wouters exception – just not under the DFL's current, inconsistent practice.24

Like the RfSV, the '50+1' rule governs outsiders' access – here, investors seeking control of Bundesliga clubs – and the Bundeskartellamt uses ROGON to neutralise that feature. At the object stage, it relies on paragraph 51: effects on undertakings outside the association (here, investors) do not signal the particular harmfulness required for a restriction by object. At the necessity stage, it adopts the ECJ's 'ecosystem' reasoning, finding that the club form directly affects the ecosystem of the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga that the DFL regulates and controls.25

Concluding remarks

ROGON's significance is threefold: it makes the third-party dimension of sports regulation analytically neutral, supplies a workable modular methodology and reaffirms that the by object filter 'comes first'.26Yet it leaves national courts significant discretion in applying the Meca-Medina/Wouters doctrine, which may lead to divergent outcomes. And its proximity to Article 101(3) TFEU raises a broader question: should two such similar routes remain separate?27

• 1Case C-428/23ROGON and Others, EU:C:2026:563. See also Case C-333/21 European Superleague Company, EU:C:2023:1011 (ESL); Case C-133/24 CD Tondela and Others, EU:C:2026:361 (Tondela); Case C-209/23 FT and RRC Sports, judgment of 16 July 2026 (RRC Sports).
• 2ROGON (n 1), paras 64 and 70.
• 3Bundeskartellamt, 'Bundeskartellamt schließt Verfahren zur kartellrechtlichen Bewertung der 50+1-Regel ab', press release of 12 August 2026 (English version: 'Bundeskartellamt concludes proceeding to assess 50+1 rule under competition law').
• 4ROGON (n 1), paras 2 and 8.
• 5Ibid, paras 8 and 25.
• 6Ibid, paras 15-18.
• 7Case C-519/04 P Meca-Medina and Majcen v Commission, EU:C:2006:492, paras 27, 33 and 42; Case C-309/99 Wouters and Others, EU:C:2002:98, para 97.
• 8For instance, a code of conduct of the Italian geologists' association setting criteria for fees charged to clients (Case C-136/12 Consiglio Nazionale dei Geologi, EU:C:2013:489, paras 53-56) and Bulgarian rules on minimum lawyers' fees binding on clients (Joined Cases C-427/16 and C-428/16 CHEZ Elektro Bulgaria and FrontEx International, EU:C:2017:890, paras 53-55).
• 9ROGON (n 1), para 19.
• 10Ibid, para 64.
• 11ESL (n 1), paras 183, 186 and 187.
• 12Tondela (n 1), paras 43 and 45-49; ESL (n 1), para 166.
• 13ROGON (n 1), paras 50-51 and 53-56.
• 14Ibid, para 56.
• 15RRC Sports (n 1), paras 132-138, 158 and 170.
• 16CAA Base Ltd and others v The Football Association Ltd, FA Rule K arbitral tribunal award, see eg paras 168, 200-282, 316.
• 17ROGON (n 1), para 36, citing ESL (n 1), para 183 and the case-law cited, and Tondela (n 1), para 91.
• 18ROGON (n 1), paras 53–57.
• 19Ibid, paras 58–60.
• 20CAA Base Ltd, para 200.
• 21ROGON (n 1), para 65.
• 22Ibid, paras 67-70.
• 23Bundeskartellamt Closure Letter, pp 2-4, reproducing § 8(2) and (3) of the DFL e.V. statutes; see also Bundeskartellamt press release (n 3).
• 24Ibid, pp 4 and 10.
• 25Ibid, pp 10-11 and 19, citingROGON (n 1), paras 51 and 57.
• 26ROGON (n 1), paras 62, 64 and 70.
• 27Ibid, paras 48 and 63; on the convergence with Article 101(3) TFEU, see RRC Sports (n 1), paras 186 and 219-220, and R Elkerbout, S Merenlahti and S Soetaert, 'While Spain took the trophy, Luxembourg took another look at the rulebook', The Competition Law Blog, 19 August 2026.