Sports organisers warned over fines

Date: 22/07/1999

By Peter Chapman

OUTGOING Competition Commissioner Karel van Miert has warned sports organisers that they risk heavy fines in future if they breach EU competition rules when selling tickets for events.

The warning follows this week's 'symbolic' €1000 fine imposed on the Comité Français d'Organisation, which ran the ticketing operations at last year's soccer World Cup.

Van Miert had planned to follow up last year's written warning with a far tougher reprimand for ticketing arrangements which, he said, unfairly favoured French citizens over foreign fans.

But he said the Commission had decided to let the organisers off the hook after they cooperated with officials and agreed to concessions. "They cooperated in a positive spirit and also, because the revenues will be spent on useful public initiatives, it would be unfair to take this away," he said.

Van Miert added that the French could also be partially forgiven because there was no case law on the issue and they had followed similar practices to previous World Cup organisers.

However, his officials said there could be no such excuses in future and warned that the institution would "not hesitate" to take action against organisers who failed to abide by the rules.