A little over two months ago, seven former professional football players filed a complaint in Paris against the National Union of Professional Footballers (UNFP) and Panini France, a subsidiary of the Italian group Panini, for marketing that they considered fraudulent famous stickers with their photo. New stage in an already old dispute, these seven players, including the former French international and Rennes player Jimmy Briand or the former Parisian striker Fabrice Pancrate, considered that the UNFP had deceived them by making them sign for the benefit of a commercial subsidiary and ultimately of the Panini company a transfer of their image rights “non-negotiated, absolute, automatic and without compensation”.
The Paris prosecutor’s office indicated on Tuesday that the complaint in question had been closed at the beginning of November, on the grounds that “no criminal offense appeared”. “A complaint with the constitution of a civil party is in the process of being regularized,” reacted the players’ lawyers, Me Elie Dottelonde and Laure Diu-Lambrechts. The dispute between these players and the UNFP and Panini France has already been the subject of civil proceedings and, in mid-May, the Paris judicial court ordered the two companies to pay damages to four players playing or having played in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. The courts then ruled that the UNFP did not provide proof that its commercial subsidiary, linked with Panini, held the rights to the players’ images.
