Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct bid to have Newcastle United sell its 2024/25 season kit in its stores has failed.
Sports Direct, part of the Frasers Group, filed a claim last month to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) stating that Newcastle United refused to supply its replica kit for the upcoming season.
The Premier League club reasons were that it has entered into an exclusive retail arrangement with JD Sport to sell its upcoming replica kit.
Newcastle’s kit is currently made by Manchester-based Castore, but the club has agreed to a new partnership with Adidas starting in the 2024-25 season.
Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley owned the football club between 2007 to 2021. It was then taken over by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.
The retail giant sought an injunction application against this move, which saw the legal parties at a hearing last week at the Tribunal.
At the hearing, the leading barrister for Sports Direct, Brick Court’s Tony Singla KC, argued that his clients, Sports Direct, had stocked Newcastle’s replica kit for decades, and there is no objective justification for this new arrangement.
The retail giant outlined that this new arrangement amount to an abuse of the club’s dominant position in the wholesale market, and is “based on unlawful anti-competitive agreements”.
Last Friday, the Tribunal handed down its judgment where by an unanimous decision, the Sports Direct application for interim injunctive relief was refused.
The judgement added the injunction refusal made “a speedy trial more, and not less, urgent”.
It noted that at the conclusion of the hearing last week, the Tribunal “urged the parties to give careful consideration as to how quickly a trial could come on, focusing on the necessary (and not merely desirable) procedural steps in the run up to trial.”
The ruling added: “We expect speedy (and, ideally, agreed) proposals from the parties, failing which the Tribunal will, in short order, make its own proposals.”
Both Sports Direct and Newcastle United have been contacted for comment.
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