TAD upholds €15,000 fine after the ‘television case’ | OneFootball

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAD) upheld the fine imposed on FC Porto by the Disciplinary Board (CD) of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), following a statement released in November 2025 in connection with the ‘television case’ involving the match between the Dragons and SC Braga.

At the time, the blue-and-white club’s response to the controversy sparked by Fábio Veríssimo’s complaint of pressure resulted in a €15,000 fine from the CD, prompting FC Porto to appeal to the TAD.

According to the ruling now made public by the TAD, the arbitral panel “decided, by majority, to dismiss the claimant’s request [FC Porto], acquitting the defendant [FPF], and, consequently, upholding the ruling issued by the defendant within the legal order.”

At the heart of the decision was a passage from FC Porto’s statement in which the Dragons spoke of “attempts to whitewash crucial incidents with a direct impact on results through the coordinated conduct of commentators with privileged ties within the decision-making bodies.”

“The claimant does not mention the commentators’ privileged links with officeholders in decision-making bodies in an attempt to ‘explain’ the commentators’ coordinated and repeated conduct. Instead, the claimant suggests that the officeholders of decision-making bodies are aware of the coordinated conduct of commentators who whitewash crucial incidents — conduct that is repeated and therefore evident — and somehow benefit from it, otherwise they would not, under normal circumstances, continue to maintain ‘privileged relations’ with them. Besides being something that goes beyond ‘criticism in the public sphere — including criticism by other sports stakeholders — conveyed through the various forms of expression’ — and is therefore unlawful — it is an action that cannot but be deemed culpable, given that the dissected meaning of the expression and the impact it will have on the general public are known to the claimant (and, if they are not, they should be),” the ruling states.

It should be recalled that, still in the ‘television case’, FC Porto had already been punished with a fine of €12,750 for repeatedly showing controversial incidents in the dressing room of the refereeing team led by Fábio Veríssimo. On that occasion, the Dragons also appealed to the TAD, which ultimately upheld the sanction imposed by the FPF’s CD.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.