Newcastle United have been ‘tactically astute’ by not going on the ‘full attack’ after the sponsorship rules introduced following the Magpies’ takeover were declared void.
That is the view of Stevie Loughrey, a partner at Onside Law, who specialises in commercial litigation and arbitration, after a tribunal panel found that the league’s original associated party transactions (APT) rules were ‘void and unenforceable’ following a legal challenge by Manchester City. These rules were in place between 2021 and 2024.
Manchester City have also launched fresh arbitration proceedings against the amended rules, but the outcome of APT1 has certainly provided food for thought in legal circles in the meantime. Having already discussed how Newcastle could make a ‘strong claim’ for compensation, if the Premier League ‘applied significant reductions’, Loughrey suggested there was ‘another line of potential attack’ because shareholder loans were not included in the previous set of rules.
Therefore, it could be argued that those clubs who had shareholder loans at zero or close to zero percent interest had an ‘unfair sporting advantage over them during that period’. If those clubs had their shareholder loans recalculated at commercial rates of interest, they may have had significantly less money to spend within PSR rules, but Loughrey stressed that would only be a ‘another line of potential attack’ if Newcastle were ‘minded to’.
“Newcastle have been tactically astute to date,” he told ChronicleLive. “While they have voted against the APT rules and provided statements in support of Man City’s case against the Premier League, they have not elected to go on the full attack.
“I suspect the club will wish to keep all options open but will only pull the trigger on these sorts of claims if it feels it really has to, for example, because it feels the Premier League’s decision on new submissions it has made are wrong and materially prejudices its position.”
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