• Private Equity and Common Ownership in Professional Rugby: Applying the Delivery Hero Standard (September 2025), available here

 

On 2 June 2025, the European Commission fined Delivery Hero and Glovo €329 million for engaging in anticompetitive practices, including the exchange of sensitive labour market information, market sharing, and no-poach agreements. Both companies settled, receiving a reduced penalty. Central to the decision was the Commission’s finding that Delivery Hero’s minority stake in Glovo created structural links that facilitated coordination, amounting to a “by object” infringement of Article 101 TFEU.

 

While rooted in the platform economy, the case has wider implications. It signals a stricter approach to minority shareholdings, labour market coordination, and information exchange between economically linked entities. This post examines how that reasoning could extend to professional rugby union, where private equity investment and cross-league ownership structures may create similar incentives, and risks, under EU competition law.

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• Sports Antitrust 2025: the year in review (March 2026), available here​​

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This briefing provides an overview of key developments in sports competition law during 2025, drawing on discussions from the inaugural European League of Sports Antitrust webinar.  The analysis highlights three core trends: the move toward more transparent and objective rule-making by governing bodies, increased scrutiny of labour market restrictions such as no-poach agreements and transfer systems, and the growing role of private enforcement through damages actions. It also examines how recent case law, including the CJEU’s “Sports Trilogy,” has tightened the standards applied to sporting regulations.

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• Competition Law Risks, Wartime Commodity Shocks and the Tondela Ruling: regulatory scrutiny in disrupted markets (April 2026), available here

 

Geopolitical shocks, such as the oil and fertiliser crisis triggered by the USA/Israel–Iran conflict, may reshape competition law risk across UK and EU markets.  Focusing on highly exposed sectors such as energy, agriculture, transport and retail, this briefing highlights how crisis conditions can encourage coordination, price alignment and exploitative behaviour, while simultaneously attracting heightened regulatory scrutiny. It emphasises that competition authorities historically intensify enforcement during such periods, rather than relax it.  

 

The briefing also considers the implications of the AG's  opinion in Tondela, and how a more contextual assessment of potentially problematic conduct may create an opportunity for European enforcers to take geopolitical extremes into account.