Frans de Weger

Chairman, FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber & Partner/Founder, BMDW Advocaten

Frans de Weger is Attorney-at-Law registered at the bar in the Netherlands and has been working in sports law for more than fifteen years.

In the past, Frans worked at the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) as a legal assistant, as a licensed player’s agent and for seven years at the organisation for Dutch professional football clubs, the Federation of Professional Football Organisations (FBO). At the FBO, he further specialised in national and international football law and regularly advised on various legal issues, including player contracts, national and international transfers, training fees and solidarity contributions.

In 2015, Frans was appointed as CAS arbitrator and since then is regularly appointed by parties as a arbiter and by CAS as Sole Arbitrator or President.

In 2021 Frans was appointed for a period of 4 years as Chairperson of the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC), FIFA’s decision-making body that deals with the international employment and transfer related disputes between players and clubs

Frans is also the author of two editions of The Jurisprudence of the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (2008 and 2016). These books provide a detailed overview of all the FIFA DRC jurisprudence published between 2001 and 2016. The books contain an analysis of all the published DRC cases. Special attention is also given to the composition of the FIFA DRC, its relationship with national law, its jurisdiction, the resulting means of implementation and the appeal procedure before the CAS.

Given his specialised knowledge of dispute resolution in international sports, Frans also gives various lectures and is a regular guest lecturer at a variety of universities, in the Netherlands, such as the University of Amsterdam and the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and in the management course professional football of the Dutch FA.