Marco Villiger

Marco Villiger is the founder and partner at MV Sports Consulting. During his almost 20-year career in the sports industry, he has held various top management positions at FIFA, including serving the organisation for many years as its Deputy Secretary General and Chief Legal Officer. For more than a decade, Marco Villiger not only oversaw all legal affairs of world football’s governing body but also held a dual role as Head of FIFA’s Administration division, including the Commercial, Finance and Human Resources divisions. Thanks to this experience, Marco Villiger has a thorough understanding of the particulars of the global sports landscape, both nationally and internationally.

As FIFA’s Chief Legal Officer, Marco Villiger was in charge of all corporate, statutory and disciplinary matters of world football’s governing body and was responsible for the development and implementation of all FIFA regulations, which form the legal framework for world football. This included all matters relating to player transfers, the FIFA transfer matching system, FIFA’s rules on third-party ownership of players’ economic rights, intermediaries/football agents, transfer disputes, the club licensing programme, the rules on eligibility for national representative teams and FIFA’s regulations on the fight against doping and match fixing. Marco Villiger also represented FIFA in various proceedings before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Marco Villiger was a member of the FIFA Management Board and served as legal advisor to the FIFA Council for 12 years. He was also a member of the FIFA/LOC Management Boards for all editions of the FIFA World Cup from 2010 to 2022 and was appointed to the FIFA Bid Evaluation Task Force for the award of the hosting rights for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Marco Villiger played a prominent role in connection with the reform of world football’s governing body. As a member of the FIFA Reform Committee in 2016, he worked on the comprehensive reform package ratified by the FIFA Congress in 2016, which is considered an important milestone in FIFA’s history.

In connection with the investigations into world football, Marco Villiger led the internal investigations at FIFA in close cooperation with the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland and the US Department of Justice and led the multinational team of external lawyers appointed by FIFA. Marco Villiger represented FIFA at the IOC in the “Athletes’ Entourage Commission” and at the “Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF)”. Thanks to these activities and his outstanding integrity, Marco Villiger is held in high esteem not only in world football, but in the entire sporting world.

Marco Villiger teaches at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zurich and was appointed Chairman of the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) independent working group on the protection of commercial rights in 2020.

Marco Villiger studied law at the University of Zurich and graduated with a degree in law in 2000. He was licensed to practise law in Switzerland in 2003.

Marco Villiger offers services in German, English and French.