A memorandum of understanding was signed on 4 August 2017 between the Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Sport, CONI, FIGCLega Serie A, Lega Serie B, Lega Pro, National Amateur League, Italian Footballers’ Association, Italian Football Coaches’ Association and Italian Referees’ Association.
Also present at the signing of the protocol, the “fruit” of several months’ work by the “experts” of the Football Federation and the National Observatory on Sporting Events (which is a consultancy body established within the Ministry of the Interior), were also present the Chief of Cabinet of the Ministry of the Interior, the Chief of Police, the General Commander of the Carabinieri Corps and, for the Guardia di Finanza, the Deputy Chief of Staff.
For once, in short, no one was missing. At least at an institutional level, because then the fans, the first recipients, were once again only able to take note of the choices that fell from top to bottom.
The stated intent was to “create a renewed management model for football events” in order to protect and promote the “social dimension of football” (that’s right!).
On that occasion, the president of the National Observatory on Sporting Events spoke about the future of the fan card (a “Maronian” creation of 2009), communicating that within three years it would be transformed into a fidelity card mainly for commercial use, only necessary to watch the games considered most at risk.
In the face of this, however, the reverse of the medal emerged.
And in fact, the memorandum of understanding of August 2017 provided for the possibility for sports clubs to condition the purchase of tickets and season tickets on the tacit acceptance of general contract conditions, consisting of a predetermined code of ethics, and established that the violation of the code of ethics should have led to the suspension or withdrawal of the person’s approval by the sports club, for one or more subsequent matches.
On the basis of this provision, in March 2018 the FIGC introduced, in paragraph 10 of article 12 of the FIGC Sports Justice Code, the obligation for all professional clubs to “implement” the approval system within their ticketing policies, with financial penalties for clubs that had not adopted the approval system before the start of the following sporting season or that had not applied it.
The provision was then transfused into art. 27 of the “new” FIGC sports justice code, approved in 2019, which provides as follows:
“1. Professional clubs they have to adopt a regulatory code for the transfer of admission tickets to football events which: a) provides for the rejection of all forms of violence, discrimination and behavior in contrast with the principles of correctness, probity and civil coexistence, identifying as relevant conduct for the application of the same code those attributable to a football event that violate any of these principles; b) subordinates the acquisition of the same titles to the acceptance, by the users, of the same code; c) provides, in the event of its violation, the application, in relation to the nature and seriousness of the facts and conduct, of the institution of “appreciation” as a temporary suspension of the admission ticket, its definitive withdrawal and the prohibition on acquiring a new title.
2. In the event of failure to adopt the regulatory code, before the start of the football season, the clubs incur a fine in the following measures: Euro 200,000 for violations in Serie A; €100,000 for violations in Serie B; 50,000 euros for violations in the C Series.
3. In the event of failure to apply the “appreciation” principle provided for by the same regulatory code for the transfer of admission tickets to football events, the clubs incur a fine in the following measures: Euro 20,000 for violations in the Serie A sphere; €10,000 for violations in Serie B; 5,000 euros for violations in the C Series”.
Therefore, mostly in the summer of 2018 and following a standard model, professional football clubs adopted these “codes of conduct” (in reality, they limited themselves to publishing the text on their websites, as there is no news of actual acts of approval by the Boards of Directors).
What must concern both legal practitioners and sports enthusiasts is above all the generality of the provisions contained in the codes of conduct.
Just think, by way of example, of the art. 3, third sentence, of the Juventus FC code of conduct: “Approval can also be exercised by the Sports Club in relation to all those actions aimed at threatening, denigrating, offending, uncivilly contesting people, authorities and public or private institutions, including the Sports Club, its employees and/or representatives, security personnel, the stewards present inside the stadium, as well as in relation to all conduct that entails administrative penalties for the Sports Club, or which in any case is likely to cause damage to the interests and/or image and /or the name and/or reputation and/or decorum of the same”.
Basically, the professional clubs, with the approval of the institutions and bodies that signed the 2017 memorandum of understanding, have effectively given themselves a “free hand” as regards the possibility of selecting spectators of football events.
A new form of selection has thus been added to the selection “by census”, which follows the progressive increase in ticket prices, implemented through a sort of “private DASPO”.
I will dedicate a subsequent article to the legitimacy or otherwise of the codes of conduct and to the methods of defense against objections by football clubs: the potentially disruptive effect of the institution of approval makes it appropriate that spectators of sporting events are aware of their rights so as not to get overwhelmed by any initiatives perpetrated by rich and powerful professional football clubs, increasingly inclined to transform sport into a show for the use and consumption of their interests, with respect to which the forced removal, even preventively, of any element of potential disturbance appears sadly functional.
Paolo Alberto Reineri
(lawyer of the Court of Turin)
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