Swiss Federal Supreme Court Judgment of 10 November 2025, Motion to set aside CAS Award CAS 2024/O/10564 of 15 April 2025
A cooperation agreement between two professional football clubs (the Agreement) provided for FIFA jurisdiction as a primary forum, with CAS arbitration as a subsidiary mechanism if FIFA proved to be incompetent. After the expiration of the Agreement, one club (the Club) initiated proceedings before FIFA, which declined to hear the case on the ground that the claim was time-barred under Article 23 para. 3 of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP). The Club subsequently brought the claim to the CAS, arguing that FIFA’s refusal triggered CAS jurisdiction as per the Agreement.
The CAS panel rejected this argument, holding that FIFA’s decision was based on inadmissibility rather than lack of jurisdiction. According to the panel, FIFA remained competent in principle to hear the dispute, but was prevented from examining it due to the expiry of the regulatory time limit in the FIFA RSTP. As a result, the condition for CAS’s subsidiary jurisdiction – namely, FIFA’s lack of competence – was not fulfilled and declined jurisdiction.
In the subsequent motion before the SFT, the Club argued that the arbitration clause should be interpreted broadly and that the term “competent” encompassed all situations in which FIFA refused to hear a case, including issues related to the time barred claim. The SFT swiftly rejected this position. Following the contractual interpretation principles, the SFT held that the parties had clearly intended FIFA to be the primary forum and CAS to act only where FIFA lacked jurisdiction. As such, a procedural rule rendering a claim inadmissible does not affect FIFA’s jurisdictional power (ratione temporis) but rather the underlying right and therefore cannot activate CAS’s subsidiary jurisdiction (at 5.4).
Altogether, this is an interesting judgment that reinforces the distinction between jurisdiction and admissibility (with respect to the time limit to bring a claim to the competent instance) but also the practical consequences arising out of it. Accordingly, regulatory deadlines – whether before FIFA or CAS – are procedural conditions governing access to a forum: Parties cannot circumvent an agreed jurisdictional hierarchy in multi-tier dispute resolution clauses by allowing time limits to lapse.
