Everything You Need to Know About MCO Rules in Football

You have probably heard this week about Crystal Palace's appeal to UEFA following their demotion to the Conference League.

The Eagles' FA Cup triumph back in May earned them a spot in UEFA's Europa League competition, however Nottingham Forest are now set to take their place.

This is all down to Multi-Club Ownership (MCO) rules that come into play once two clubs competing within the same UEFA competition meet the requirements.

So, what are the MCO rules?

Multi-Club Ownership Rules

Multi-Club Ownership is when one entity has a majority stake in multiple football clubs, notably the City Football Group which owns 100% of Manchester City, Melbourne City, Troyes, Montevideo City Torque and majority shares with New York City and Palermo amongst others.

Lots of owners are now expanding their control with several clubs, such as INEOS with OGC Nice and Manchester United, BlueCo with Chelsea and Strasbourg or of course Red Bull with Leipzig, Salzburg, New York and Bragantino.

The main benefit for this is trading within your clubs and with ease, as the number of middlemen involved in negotiations is reduced and therefore a young player with lots of potential playing at Red Bull Bragantino can easily be sold to Red Bull Leipzig within the same ownership model and compete in Europe's elite competition.

However, the reason for UEFA banning two clubs majority-owned by the same entity is because of the potential for match fixing that could benefit their sister club to increase the owners' profits.

How Does This Link to Palace?

Crystal Palace are majority-owned by John Textor, an American businessman, who owns other clubs such as Olympique Lyon and Botafogo.

This is where the problem begins; Both the Eagles and Lyon qualified for next season's Europa League, meaning that one of them would be unable to enter, which ended up being Palace as their 12th-place league finish was below Lyon in sixth.

The French club had originally been relegated from Ligue 1 due to Textor's company announcing debts of £422m, which would have allowed Palace to play in the competition instead, although this decision was later overturned following an appeal.

The American owner announced plans to sell his 43% stake in Palace to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson in June and he also resigned from a leadership position at Lyon, however the sale is yet to be completed and so UEFA's requirements weren't met in time.

Eagles chairman Steve Parish has publicly ridiculed UEFA's ruling, calling it the 'biggest injustice in the history of football' and that his side aren't part of a multi-club setup, of which Textor holds no decisive influence at the club.

As such, the club have launched an appeal with their legal team to have the decision overturned, with a decision expected by 11 August.

BREAKING: The Court of Arbitration for Sport has confirmed Crystal Palace have appealed against the decision to demote them from the Europa League 🚨

A decision is expected by August 11th. pic.twitter.com/Bk8ukfhb8k

— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) July 22, 2025

How Did Others Avoid Demotion?

Other cases of multi-club ownerships have been allowed to stand by UEFA and play in the same competition, such as Manchester City and surprise package Girona under the aforementioned City Football Group model.

The clubs got round the rules by agreeing to UEFA's demands - either lower their stake in Girona below 30% or place their holdings in a blind trust managed by an independent UEFA-backed panel.

🚨 UEFA will allow Girona to join sister club Manchester City in the Champions League as long as City Football Group reduces its stake to below 30% from the current 47%.

(Source: Sun Sport) pic.twitter.com/2sh0HJHlue

— Transfer News Live (@DeadlineDayLive) May 15, 2024

City Football Group chose the latter option and placed a percentage of their shares into an independent trust from 1 July 2024 until 30 June 2025, a date which has since passed and the ownership model has now retained its 47% control over the Spanish club since they haven't qualified for the Champions League this time round.

Nottingham Forest also made an early precautionary change to their structure as owner Evangelos Marinakis also controls Greek side Olympiacos, with both of the sides battling for Champions League qualification before Forest missed out at the end of the season.

Marinakis relinquished influence over Forest to ensure both sides would have complied with UEFA's rules, however he has since returned to have full control since the English club missed out on the competition.

Many football fans believe that the rules are only on paper and not properly enforced as they point to allegations of corruption within UEFA to allow other models to have multiple clubs playing in one competition, whereas a smaller team like Palace can't do the same.

UEFA MAFIA! ❌ Crystal Palace fans protest at UEFA headquarters over Europa League exclusion 👏🏻

A group of Crystal Palace ultras traveled to UEFA’s headquarters in Switzerland to protest the club’s controversial exclusion from European football. They brought a suitcase full of… pic.twitter.com/yCK3FZwow4

— 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐔𝐥𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 (@thecasualultra) July 23, 2025

However, others argue that the owners of City Football Group, Red Bull and even Marinakis were simply sharper and smarter to find loopholes around the rules, whilst Textor was slow to act and in the end it is simply his fault that he couldn't sell his shares in Palace in time to stay in the Europa League.