What happened
Late last week, European soccer’s governing body UEFA announced it had stripped English Premier League soccer side Crystal Palace of their place in the Europa League, the second-tier pan-European competition, after ruling the club had breached its multi-club ownership rules.
Go deeper with GlobalData
The club, UEFA said, had fallen foul of Article 5.01 of its Club Competition Regulations, which prevents clubs with the same owner/s competing in the same competition, demoting Palace to the third-tier Conference League.
Eagle Football Holdings, owned by American John Textor, last year held stakes in Crystal Palace (43%) and French side Olympique Lyonnais (77%), with Palace’s place thrown into doubt when both sides qualified for the second-tier competition.
UEFA’s regulations take issue with any dual holding above 30%, even though Palace argued that Textor did not have enough of a controlling role for the club to fall foul of the regulations.
Lyon qualified by finishing sixth in France’s top-tier Ligue 1, while Palace won England’s FA Cup competition to win a place in the European competition.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataAs Lyon placed higher in their domestic league than Palace did in the Premier League (12th), the French team's place in the Europa League took precedence.
Textor moved to mitigate the issue, negotiating a £190 million ($255.3 million) sale agreement for his stake in Palace with NFL team owner and former US ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, who is now undergoing the league’s ownership test to verify his suitability for governance.
However, as he failed to enact his divestment by UEFA’s May deadline, which was set before Palace had qualified for the competition, the governing body ruled against the Premier League side.
The club have since confirmed they will be appealing the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The details
The situation of two clubs with the same owner qualifying for the same European competition would usually be dealt with swiftly at the end of a season (May), but UEFA’s decision was delayed until last week after Lyon were provisionally relegated from Ligue 1 by France’s financial watchdog due to financial issues.
The sudden curveball threw a lifeline to Palace, which would have seen their place in the Europa League saved if Lyon had to withdraw from the 2025-26 competition due to the associated costs with competing in the tournament.
France’s DNCG provisionally relegated Lyon to the second-tier Ligue 2 last November and gave the team a deadline of July 2025 to improve its debt situation, which came to €505.1 million ($585.7 million) last October.
Lyon appealed the decision, and early last week, the DNCG overturned its decision after Lyon proved its financial situation had been adequately ameliorated via a combination of player sales, early player payments from indebted parties such as Paris Saint-Germain, and the sale of other parts of the Eagle Football Holdings business.
Days later, much to Palace’s dismay, UEFA announced its decision to throw Palace out of the Europa League and into the Conference League.
In its announcement, UEFA said Palace has an option to appeal the decision with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which the club is assessing.
At the time, Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish questioned UEFA’s decision, telling Sky Sports: “It’s an incredible travesty of justice. We’re not part of a multi-club organization. [UEFA president] Aleksander Ceferin stood on a platform of supporting small clubs.
“We stood together with the Super League because I wanted to maintain that dream. I didn’t want a competition where clubs like us were locked out. Maybe if we weren’t Crystal Palace, if we were a different club, [the UEFA investigation] wouldn’t have even got this far.”
However, UEFA has denied any claim that Palace have been treated harshly, pointing to the case as a clear breach of the regulations after assessing “the documentation submitted” by Lyon and Palace.
A similar situation arose with Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis, who placed his share in a blind trust before UEFA’s March 1 deadline to ensure they would be able to join Olympiakos, another of his clubs, in the Champions League if they had qualified.
Forest eventually finished seventh, securing a Conference League place, but could now inherit Palace’s place in the Europa League should the decision be upheld.
Why it matters
Palace have been adamant throughout the decision-making process that while Textor owned a share in the club, he had no influence over it, and no conflict of interest between the clubs would occur should the two clubs compete in the same competition.
The use of a blind trust to enable other clubs with the same owners to play together in UEFA competition has also drawn the ire of the public, who see it as a loophole with no real influence over whether there is still a conflict of interest.
Such is the feeling of injustice, a group of Liberal Democrat MPs from south London have written to the UK’s culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, urging her to intervene over the demotion, while hundreds of supporters marched to home ground Selhurst Park on Tuesday night to protest the decision.
Conrad Wiacek, GlobalData Sport's head of analysis, said: “The decision to exclude Crystal Palace from their rightful place in the Europa League based on a technicality of ownership structure seems mean spirited at best from European football's governing body, at worst a calculated decision to exclude a smaller team from a larger competition to benefit those UEFA may see as 'bigger' names, or at least clubs with a greater European pedigree.
“Given that Textor's involvement in Palace was a minority owner with no greater stake in the club than the likes of Manchester City had in Girona, and both were allowed to compete in the Champions League, while clubs owned by Red Bull (Leipzig and Salzburg) were even drawn in the same group a few years ago, it is hard to look past this decision as anything other than richer, more powerful clubs getting their own way, with UEFA not wanting to upset those owners.
“With the trend of multi club ownership becoming more prevalent, UEFA is going to have to seriously address this issue to negate suggestions of corruption and poor governance, as it does seem that the richer and more influential the multi club ownership groups are, the less rules like the one that saw Palace demoted seem to apply.
"For Palace, the demotion to the Conference League may have a negative impact in terms of partnerships, but ironically could benefit them as they will likely have a greater chance of actually competing in the Conference League, so could see a commercial windfall next summer if they were to deliver success in the competition.”
Parish has been outspoken on the verdict, taking to radio programs and TV shows to express his displeasure and highlight the hypocrisy of the UEFA decision.
Yesterday, he took to The Rest is Football podcast to announce the club’s decision to appeal, stating: “We are still fighting. There’s an appeal process, so we go to CAS, and we’re very hopeful. We think we’ve got great legal arguments.
“We don’t think this is the right decision by any means. We know unequivocally that John didn’t have decisive influence over the club. We know we proved that beyond all reasonable doubt because it’s a fact.”
