Conditional autonomy in global football: public law routes and the transformation of FIFA’s private order

Private associations regulate global football, but the limits of their autonomy under public law remain contested. Focusing on FIFA as a global private order structured as a governance pyramid, this thesis examines how United States criminal enforcement and European Union free movement and competition law have reshaped its autonomy, accountability and institutional design. It then identifies the legal conditions under which FIFA’s regulatory authority can remain legitimate.
The thesis adopts doctrinal legal analysis as its primary method. It interprets FIFA and UEFA statutes and regulations, including FIFA’s governance reforms, the 2025 Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, and UEFA’s 2024 Statutes and Authorisation Rules, together with decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union, such as the judgments in Bosman, Diarra and European Superleague. A benchmark drawn from reputation-based ordering in close communities shows how informal discipline operates in decentralised networks and why it breaks down in a global hierarchical order such as FIFA.
The analysis shows that systemic corruption and recurring conflicts with European Union internal market law were predictable outcomes of concentrated authority, weak accountability and limited access to independent review. It identifies three public law routes through which external authorities now discipline this order. The United States criminal enforcement personalises liability for senior officials. European Union free movement law subjects transfer and registration rules to evidence-based proportionality. European Union competition law regulates institutional gatekeeping where regulatory and commercial functions coincide. These routes have recast FIFA’s claim to near total autonomy into conditional autonomy, in which regulatory power persists only when exercised through criteria published in advance, timely and reasoned decisions, proportionality assessed on the evidence, and access to independent and effective review. The thesis concludes by showing how this framework both exposes performative compliance and strengthens accountability in powerful transnational private regimes.