The Price of the Extras: The FEI Fee Cap and EU Competition Law

On October 21, the FEI Tribunal dismissed a challenge to one of the most practical documents in international show jumping: the FEI's List of Approved Fees, which sets the most a European organizer may charge a rider for manure disposal, a lorry hookup, an extra bale of shavings or a tack room. The challenger was Circuito Hípico del Sol, the organizer of the Sunshine Tour in Vejer de la Frontera, southern Spain, which argued that the caps could breach European Union competition law. The Tribunal never answered that question. It threw the appeal out because it was filed months too late. The FEI has won the round, and it should now go out of its way to win the argument, because the caps are right and the way the FEI is defending them is not good enough.

What the List Actually Caps

The list exists because riders asked for it. The International Jumping Riders Club (IJRC) proposed maximum fees as part of what it called work toward "greater financial transparency on costs for riders and organizers," and the FEI accepted the proposal. The FEI General Assembly approved the list on November 7, 2025, and the FEI updated it on February 3, 2026. Horse Sport reports that it came into force on April 1, 2026.

The numbers are specific, and every one of them includes VAT. Manure disposal is capped at €40, parking with electric hookup for a lorry at €120, and extra bedding or fodder at €25. A tack room, an extra box for tack and an extra stable for a non-competing horse are each capped at €250. A premium stable, defined as a permanent stable with drinking bowls measuring at least 3.20 m by 3.20 m (10'6" x 10'6"), may cost no more than €100. Additional nights before or after the show are capped at €50, and an organizer may add no more than 3% for card payments, provided it offers another way to pay. The list has also moved since the vote. When the IJRC announced the accepted proposal, it listed €60 per horse for health and customs documents (€180 outside the EU); the version now in force says that fee must be charged at government cost.

The list sits on top of the entry fee caps already written into Annex II of the FEI Jumping Rules. In Europe, the maximum entry fee per horse, before VAT, is €440 at CSI1* and CSI2*, €495 at CSI3* and €605 at CSI4*, and a CSI5* may charge no entry fee at all, except at World Cup legs in the Western European League, where the cap is €495. The rules also state the principle that gives the list its force: "No fees other than those in the FEI List of Approved Fees may be charged."

How the Appeal Failed

The procedural history, as Horse Sport reported it, is short. The Sunshine Tour's organizer received notice of the updated list on February 4, 2026, which gave it until February 25 to appeal under the FEI's 21-day deadline. It asked the FEI in July to suspend and remove the requirements, and the FEI replied that they "remained valid, binding and fully applicable." It then argued that the FEI's August 10 approval of its competition schedule, which incorporated the list, was a fresh decision it could appeal, and it filed on August 31. The sole panel member, Agustín Fattal Jaef, disagreed, finding that the schedule approval only carried forward requirements already in place. Allowing organizers to restart the clock each time a schedule is approved, the Tribunal said, would create "ongoing legal uncertainty." It added a sentence both sides will quote for months: "This decision does not, in any event, rule on the compatibility of the List with Article 101 TFEU." A representative of the organizer told Horse Sport it will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The Organizer's Case, Stated Fairly

The Sunshine Tour's argument deserves better than to be dismissed on a calendar. Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union prohibits "decisions by associations of undertakings" that restrict competition, and the first example it gives is any decision that will "directly or indirectly fix purchase or selling prices or any other trading conditions." A ceiling is still a price. The FEI is the body whose sanction an organizer needs to run an international show, and it is now telling those organizers what they may charge for services they buy, staff and supply themselves. In Horse Sport's account, the organizer argued that it faced "an untenable choice": comply and risk EU competition sanctions, or refuse and put its FEI sanctioning at risk.

There is a commercial point beneath the legal one. A single euro figure for straw, manure removal or electricity, set in Lausanne and applied from Spain to Sweden, cannot track the real cost of those services in every venue and every season. An organizer running a long winter tour can fairly argue that the extras are where it recovers the gap between what a capped entry fee covers and what a week of stabling actually costs.

The European courts have also made clear that sports federations do not stand outside this law. On December 21, 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against the International Skating Union, confirming that its rules on authorizing competitions were unlawful. The Court held that organizing sporting competitions "clearly constitutes an economic activity" that must comply with the competition rules, and that a federation's rules on the organization of competitions must be subject to a framework ensuring they are "transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate." That case concerned a federation blocking rival events, which is a different problem from capping a manure fee. It does mean the FEI cannot assume its rules are safe simply because they are written in the name of the sport.

The entry fee cap was always only as strong as the list beneath it, because an organizer barred from raising the entry can still raise the bedding.

Why the Caps Are Still Right

The weakness in the organizer's case is the identity of the people the caps protect. Riders at an FEI show are a captive market for the week. A horse cannot be bedded at a different venue, and an athlete who arrives a day early has no competing stable to call. The entry fee caps would mean very little if the same costs could simply be moved into the extras, which is precisely why the riders' own club asked for those extras to be capped too. A ceiling that keeps a near monopoly supplier from charging what it likes to a buyer with no alternative is the kind of rule competition law exists to tolerate, and the FEI has a defensible case to make on proportionality.

The rules also already contain a pressure valve. Annex II says the fees must be respected "unless agreed otherwise by the FEI," which gives an organizer with a genuine cost problem a route to a dispensation without tearing up the rule for everyone.

What the FEI Should Do Before CAS Decides

Winning on a deadline leaves the substantive question open for the next organizer who files on time, and the FEI should use the interval to build the record the Court of Justice described. It should publish the cost basis behind each figure, set out how the caps will be reviewed against inflation and local prices, and publish how many dispensations it grants and why. Each of those steps makes the rule more transparent, more objective and easier to defend as proportionate.

It should also look at what the list leaves out. VIP tables, VIP passes, photography, private paddocks and walkers all appear on the list with no maximum stated. A transparency rule that stops at the manure fee and leaves the table by the ring untouched protects riders at the cheaper end of the bill.

What It Means on This Side of the Atlantic

American riders are not untouched by this. In North America the FEI uses a different test: at a CSI outside the World Cup, the sum of the entry fees for three horses and all fees charged may not exceed 4% of prize money at CSI1* and CSI2*, 3% at CSI3*, 2% at CSI4* and 1% at CSI5*. At the CSI5* minimum prize money of USD 517,000, that ceiling works out to USD 5,170 for three horses and every fee on the bill. The same sentence limiting organizers to fees on the approved list appears in the North American requirements as well.

The FEI's rules govern FEI international events only. The national hunter and jumper shows that fill most American amateur calendars run under national rules, which the FEI list does not reach. For riders who have spent a season adding up shavings, stall mats and lorry hookups, the European argument is worth watching for that reason alone: it is a test of whether a governing body can put a number on what its own organizers charge, and make that number hold. NHE's view is that it can and should, and that the FEI's next filing ought to defend the caps on their merits.