The Sports Labor Reform Law (Legislative Decree 36/2021) differentiates the contractual regime applicable to the “sports worker” in relation to the “professional area” or the so-called “amateur area” in which the athlete performs his activity.
The Italian Football Federation (Federazione Italiana Gioco Calcio), qualifies as “professionals” the footballers and female footballers who engage in sporting activity for remuneration on a continuous basis, registered for clubs associated in the professional leagues and/or for clubs participating in the Women’s Serie A Championship (Art. 28 of the Federation’s Internal Organizational Rules – NOIF).
However, the concrete issue has emerged regarding the contractual legal regime to be applied to those players/sports workers who, although registered with member companies in the professional leagues, lend their sports activities in areas and events that do not fall within the professional sector.
This is the case, for example, for players participating in non-professional women’s soccer leagues, which Art. 29 NOIF expressly qualifies as “non-professional.”
These “female sports workers,” in fact, are, on the one hand, excluded from the contractual regime provided for the “professional sports worker” in Art. 27 of the Reform Law, insofar as they carry out sports activities in a “non-professional” sector; on the other hand, they would also seem to be excluded from the application of the contractual regime provided by the subsequent Article 28, which regulates the contractual relationship of sports workers who perform activities in the so-called “area of amateurism,” an area, the latter, into which the club with which they are registered (and in whose favor they perform sports work) might not fall, which, insofar as it is associated with a professional league would fall into the so-called “area of professionalism,” according to the provisions of Art. 38 of the same Law.
The interpretative impasse could be overcome, considering the substantive invariance of the sporting employment relationship of non-professional footballers (who retain the status of “amateurs” as they operate in a non-professional and therefore amateur sector” regardless of whether the employing sports club belongs to the area of professionalism or amateurism ex art. 38 Legislative Decree cited above), using, as an “atout,” the tool of analogical interpretation applied to art. 28 of Legislative Decree. 36/2021, so as to include, within the disciplinary scope of this rule, also the “amateur sectors” where companies falling within the so-called “area of professionalism” also operate, in compliance with federal regulations.
*excerpt from a forthcoming report