What The UK Competition Authority’s Price Fixing Investigation Means For Football Clubs & Kit Suppliers

On 7 June 2022, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its preliminary finding that Elite Sports Group, JD Sports and Rangers Football Club had engaged in the fixing of retail prices (for an explanation on price fixing, please see footnote 1)1 for certain Rangers-branded clothing products (including replica kits and training wear) and were therefore in breach of the UK competition law prohibition against anticompetitive agreements. A few months earlier (September 2021), the CMA had also announced that it was investigating suspected anti-competitive conduct in relation to the sale of Leicester City FC-branded products and merchandise in the UK and that investigation is still ongoing.2

The two cases are not the first time the CMA has taken an interest in the sale of football kits and football branded merchandise. In 2003,3 the Office for Fair Trading (the CMA’s predecessor) found that several sportswear retailers, including JJB Sports, had engaged in price-fixing conduct by fixing the resale prices of replica football kits. The infringing parties originally appealed the CMA’s decision to the Competition Appeal Tribunal regarding their price fixing conduct but the Tribunal dismissed their appeals and the parties were ultimately fined a total of £18.6 million. The case also resulted in a follow-on damages claim brought by the Consumers’ Association resulting in JJB agreeing a settlement on 9 January 2008.4

The CMA’s new cases therefore act as a stark reminder to football clubs and their supply chain partners to carefully monitor their sale and purchase agreements as well as pricing strategies and in particular the way those strategies are communicated to their commercial partners.