Article 1 of the Swiss Civil Code grants the CAS authority to legislate where the written law is silent. Five articles of the CAS Code — R27, R37, R44.3, R57, R58 — define precisely how far that authority extends. Together, they constitute the legal mechanism through which a regulatory vacuum becomes an enforceable claim.
FIFA is headquartered in Zurich. The Court of Arbitration for Sport is seated in Lausanne. Both are subject to Swiss law. The legal framework applicable to any dispute arising from the 2026 World Cup is, therefore, primarily Swiss — with two layers of international legal influence overlaid upon it. Understanding these layers is the prerequisite for understanding what the CAS can do when FIFA's own rules are silent.
The three layers are: Swiss domestic private law (primarily the Swiss Civil Code and the Code of Obligations); Swiss private international law governing arbitration (the Federal Act on Private International Law, known by its French acronym PILA, Articles 176–194); and the CAS Code itself — a sui generis regulatory instrument that draws on both Swiss law and common law procedural traditions to create what the CAS itself has described as lex sportiva: the autonomous law of sport.
Each layer contributes something essential to the legal argument. Swiss domestic law — specifically Civil Code Article 1 — provides the authority to fill regulatory gaps. Swiss private international law — specifically PILA Article 187 — allows CAS panels to apply rules of law beyond the strict written text of the applicable regulations. The CAS Code — specifically Articles R27, R37, R44.3, R57, and R58 — defines the procedural mechanisms through which that authority is exercised.
The authoritative secondary source for the CAS Code's interpretation is Mavromati and Reeb's The Code of the Court of Arbitration for Sport: Commentary, Cases and Materials (Kluwer Law International, 2015) — a work co-authored by the CAS's own Head of Research and Secretary General, and therefore the closest available equivalent to an official commentary on the Code's provisions.[1] All references to the CAS Code in this Part draw on this work.
Chapter 4.2"(1) The law applies according to its wording or interpretation to all legal questions for which it contains a provision. (2) In the absence of a provision, the court shall decide in accordance with customary law and, in the absence of customary law, in accordance with the rule that it would establish as legislator. (3) In so doing, the court shall follow established doctrine and case law."
Article 1(2) is the most consequential three lines in this entire white paper. It establishes that when Swiss law — including, by extension, the FIFA Disciplinary Code operating under Swiss private law — does not contain a provision applicable to a specific case, the adjudicator is not simply without recourse. The adjudicator is affirmatively authorized to create the applicable rule.
The FIFA Disciplinary Code, as demonstrated in Part III, does not contain a provision that reaches the structural rational draw. Article 1(2) therefore activates: a CAS panel hearing a claim arising from a bottleneck match is legally authorized to decide "in accordance with the rule that it would establish as legislator." This is not a gap in FIFA's armor — it is an explicit authorization, embedded in Swiss law, for the CAS to write the rule FIFA failed to write.
The constraint is significant: the panel cannot create rules arbitrarily. It must draw on customary law first, and failing that, establish the rule "as legislator" — meaning the rule must be one that a rational Swiss lawmaker would adopt, grounded in general principles of law and consistent with established doctrine. The principle of good faith in contract performance (CC Article 2) and the doctrine of competitive integrity in sporting regulations both qualify. The panel has the material to work with. Article 1 gives it the authority.
"(1) Every person must act in good faith in the exercise of his or her rights and in the performance of his or her obligations. (2) The manifest abuse of a right is not protected by law."
Article 2 provides the substantive content for the rule that Article 1 authorizes the CAS to create. When a CAS panel legislates to fill the gap in FIFA's Code, it needs a principle to build the new rule on. Objective good faith — the duty to exercise rights and perform obligations in a manner consistent with reasonable expectations and honest dealing — is that principle.
Every team participating in a FIFA World Cup enters a contractual relationship with FIFA governed by the tournament regulations. That relationship carries implied duties of performance. The most fundamental implied duty — the one without which the tournament has no meaning — is the duty to compete honestly and with genuine effort. A team that rationally calculates the Nash Equilibrium and plays accordingly may not be acting in subjective bad faith (it is not deceiving anyone). But it is acting in a manner that objectively violates the reasonable expectations that give the tournament its structure and value.
Article 2's doctrine of objective good faith — developed extensively in Swiss contract law and applied across the full range of private law obligations — provides the basis for a CAS panel to hold that the duty to compete is an implied term of participation, enforceable even in the absence of an explicit provision in FIFA's Code.
"(1) Any person who unlawfully causes loss or damage to another, whether wilfully or negligently, is obliged to provide compensation. (2) Any person who wilfully causes loss or damage to another in an immoral manner is likewise obliged to provide compensation."
Article 41 is the basis for FIFA's civil liability — not to the teams that played the structural draw, but to the teams that were harmed by it. New Zealand, eliminated because two Block 3 teams rationally drew, has a potential claim against FIFA under Article 41 on the following theory: FIFA unlawfully — through negligent design of the tournament calendar and format — caused damage to New Zealand's legitimate classification interest.
The "unlawfully" element is satisfied by the violation of the duty of care that a governing body of FIFA's resources, experience, and institutional memory owes to participating federations. FIFA knew the Gijón mechanism. FIFA published the calendar seventeen months before the tournament. FIFA took no corrective action. This is negligence in the Swiss civil law sense — not criminal negligence, but the failure to exercise the care that the circumstances required.
The damage element is quantifiable: lost prize money ($12M base), lost commercial activations under performance-contingent sponsorship contracts, and the sporting harm of elimination from a tournament the team qualified for in good faith. Part X of this paper provides the full financial model. The causal link — from FIFA's calendar design to the bottleneck match to New Zealand's elimination — is direct and documentable.
Switzerland's Federal Act on Private International Law (PILA), specifically Articles 176 through 194, governs international arbitration seated in Switzerland. These provisions are the legal framework within which every CAS proceeding operates. Three of their features are particularly significant for the vortex case.
PILA Article 182 grants the parties — and, in the absence of party agreement, the tribunal itself — full authority to determine the rules of procedure. In practice, this means that CAS panels have substantial discretion to admit evidence, request expert opinions, and conduct proceedings in ways that the more rigid procedural codes of domestic courts would not permit. For the vortex case, this means the panel can admit SIT forensic data (VPI, PBI, Golden Cross) under flexible evidentiary standards, without needing to satisfy the strict admissibility requirements of a domestic Swiss court.
PILA Article 187 provides that the tribunal shall decide according to the rules of law chosen by the parties, and in the absence of such choice, according to "the rules of law with which the case has the closest connection." Where the FIFA regulations are silent, Article 187 allows the panel to look beyond those regulations to Swiss civil law, to general principles of international sports law, and — critically — to the decisions of other CAS panels establishing jurisprudence constante. The gap in FIFA's Code, identified in Part III, is precisely the kind of lacuna that Article 187 was designed to address.
PILA Article 190 defines the limited grounds on which a CAS award can be challenged before the Swiss Federal Tribunal — Switzerland's highest court. The grounds are: improper constitution of the tribunal, lack of jurisdiction, excess of powers, violation of due process, and incompatibility with public policy. A CAS decision that fills a regulatory gap using the authority granted by CC Article 1 — squarely within the panel's powers under PILA Article 187 — would not be vulnerable to any of these challenges. FIFA's ability to appeal a CAS decision against it is substantially constrained.
Chapter 4.4The CAS Code — its current version entered into force in 2021, with the 2015 Mavromati and Reeb commentary remaining the authoritative interpretive source — contains five articles that are individually important and collectively decisive for the vortex litigation scenario.
"These Procedural Rules apply whenever the parties have agreed to refer a sports-related dispute to CAS. Such disputes may arise out of a contract or be based on specific statutes relating to sport. They may deal with matters of principle or with specific cases."
"The CAS's jurisdiction is broad and encompasses all disputes that have a sufficient connection to sport, including disputes about the validity of decisions by sporting bodies, disputes about participation rights, and disputes about the financial consequences of sporting decisions. The panel determines its own jurisdiction (Kompetenz-Kompetenz) and FIFA cannot limit that jurisdiction by the terms of its own regulations."
Significance for the vortex case: R27 establishes the entry door. Any dispute arising from the 2026 World Cup — including a dispute about whether FIFA's format negligently damaged an affected federation's classification interests — is within the CAS's subject-matter jurisdiction.
Critically, Mavromati and Reeb's commentary confirms that FIFA cannot limit the CAS's jurisdiction by the scope of its own Disciplinary Code. The fact that FIFA's Code does not address the structural rational draw does not mean the CAS cannot adjudicate claims arising from it. The CAS's jurisdiction flows from its own Code, not from FIFA's.
An affected federation does not need to point to a violated provision of the FIFA Code to establish CAS jurisdiction. It needs to point to a sports-related dispute — which the vortex scenario manifestly is — and to a cognizable legal theory — which CO Article 41 provides.
"If the circumstances so require, the President of the relevant Division or, once the file has been transferred to the Panel, the Panel may, upon application by a party, issue provisional or conservatory measures. Before granting such measures, the President or the Panel shall give the other parties the opportunity to be heard, unless the urgency of the situation justifies proceeding without prior hearing. Provisional measures may be granted upon condition that the requesting party provides appropriate security."
"(i) Risk of irreparable harm if the measure is not granted; (ii) likelihood of success on the merits; (iii) balance of interests favoring the applicant. All three must be satisfied. The standard of proof for each is lower than the merits standard — prima facie evidence is sufficient."
Significance for the vortex case: R37 is the provision that makes emergency intervention during the tournament possible. An affected federation that identifies a bottleneck match — using the Vortex Calculator — and commissions a same-day SIT forensic analysis has the material to satisfy all three R37 requirements.
Irreparable harm: Elimination from the World Cup is irreversible. Prize money, sponsorship activations, and competitive opportunities cannot be restored by a post-tournament monetary award alone. The harm is irreparable in the technical legal sense.
Likelihood of success: The mathematical proof (Part II) establishes the structural incentive. The SIT data establishes the behavioral signature. The Swiss law argument (this Part) establishes the legal theory. Together they constitute more than prima facie evidence of a cognizable claim.
Balance of interests: The federation's interest in correct classification outweighs FIFA's interest in procedural stability. The CAS Ad Hoc Division was specifically created for situations where tournaments generate disputes requiring immediate resolution.
"The Panel may appoint one or more experts and request from them written reports. The parties shall be given the opportunity to comment on the expert's report. An expert so appointed shall have access to all documents and records relating to the dispute. The costs of the expert shall be paid by the parties in such proportions as the Panel may determine or, if appropriate, shall be borne by CAS."
"The panel's power to appoint experts is unlimited in scope. It may appoint experts on any factual or technical matter relevant to the dispute, including matters of sports science, financial valuation, or data analysis. The panel may direct that the costs of such expert be shared between the parties or borne entirely by the CAS administration where the appointment serves the interests of justice."
Significance for the vortex case: R44.3 is the provision that transforms SIT from a party's expert — potentially dismissed as biased toward the claimant — into an official tribunal expert, with the authority and credibility that status confers.
An affected federation's legal counsel can request, in its initial petition, that the CAS panel appoint SIT Sport Intelligence Terminal as the official forensic expert under R44.3. If granted, the panel would direct SIT to produce its VPI, PBI, and Golden Cross analysis, grant SIT access to all relevant match data, and — critically — potentially fund the analysis itself if the interests of justice so require.
The forensic cost that would otherwise fall on the affected federation ($2.8M for a single-team analysis) becomes a court expense. And the analysis that was previously "the claimant's expert opinion" becomes the tribunal's official evidentiary finding. FIFA's ability to dismiss it is eliminated.
"The Panel has full power to review the facts and the law. It may issue a new decision which replaces the decision challenged or annul the decision and refer the case back to the previous instance."
"R57 grants the panel the broadest possible appellate authority. It is not limited to reviewing whether the lower instance applied the law correctly; it can substitute its own judgment on both law and fact. It can annul, modify, or replace any decision of a sporting body. This power extends to decisions about competition results, qualification, and classification — including decisions about which teams advance to the next round of a competition."
Significance for the vortex case: R57 is what gives the CAS its ultimate power in the vortex scenario. It is not limited to reviewing FIFA's decision for legal errors — it can substitute its own decision entirely. It can annul the result of the bottleneck match. It can reclassify the affected team. It can restructure the knockout bracket.
FIFA's position — that the result of the match stands because it complied with the Laws of the Game and no FIFA rule was violated — is irrelevant under R57. The CAS is not reviewing whether FIFA applied its own rules correctly. It is reviewing the legal consequences of the situation from scratch, with full de novo authority.
This is the provision that means a CAS panel can, in practical terms, take over the administration of the tournament for the duration of the dispute. If the panel grants a provisional measure under R37 while it decides the merits under R57, the tournament bracket may be held in suspension. FIFA's operational control of its own competition becomes, temporarily, subject to CAS management.
"The Panel shall decide the dispute according to the applicable regulations and, subsidiarily, to the rules of law chosen by the parties or, in the absence of such a choice, according to the law of the country in which the federation, association or sports-related body which has issued the challenged decision is domiciled or according to the rules of law that the Panel deems appropriate. In the latter case, the Panel shall give reasons for its choice of the applicable rules of law."
"The subsidiarity clause of R58 is significant: where the applicable regulations (here, FIFA's Code) do not provide a rule for the specific case before the panel, the panel may apply 'the rules of law that the Panel deems appropriate.' This has been interpreted broadly by CAS panels to include general principles of law, principles of lex sportiva, and — where appropriate — principles drawn from common law jurisdictions, provided they are consistent with Swiss public policy."
Significance for the vortex case: R58 is the textual authorization for the CAS to import common law principles — specifically the duty of good faith in competitive performance, the doctrine of competitive integrity, and the "best efforts" obligation recognized in common law jurisdictions including the UK, New Zealand, and Australia — into the applicable legal framework.
FIFA's Disciplinary Code is the first applicable source under R58. But where it is silent — as Part III demonstrated it is on the structural rational draw — R58 authorizes the panel to apply the law of FIFA's domicile (Switzerland, via CC Articles 1 and 2) or "the rules of law that the Panel deems appropriate." For a panel with common law-trained arbitrators, the duty to compete in good faith is a well-established principle they can draw on explicitly.
Combined with CC Article 1's gap-filling authority, R58 creates a dual authorization: the panel can fill the gap using Swiss law principles (the primary path) or by importing appropriate rules from other legal systems (the alternative path). FIFA cannot close either door.
The preceding analysis establishes that the CAS has the authority to fill the regulatory gap and, if the facts warrant, to find against FIFA or the teams that played the structural draw. But authority is not the same as outcome. The critical variable — identified in the original research documents underlying this paper and acknowledged here with full intellectual honesty — is the composition of the CAS panel.
CAS panels are composed of three arbitrators drawn from the CAS list of arbitrators: one nominated by the claimant, one by the respondent, and one (the president) either agreed by the parties or appointed by the CAS President. The backgrounds and legal traditions of the arbitrators on any specific panel meaningfully affect the probability that the panel will exercise its gap-filling authority in the manner described in this Part.
The panel composition variable cannot be controlled by the claimant. But the evidentiary quality can. This is the most important strategic implication of the probability analysis: the difference between a 30% and a 78% success probability is not the legal theory — it is the strength of the SIT forensic evidence. A civil law panel confronted with irrefutable statistical proof of deliberate omission (p < 0.001) faces a significantly different decision than one confronted with circumstantial observations.
This is why the Vortex Calculator and the SIT forensic system are not merely commercial products in this context. They are the instruments through which the probability of legal success is maximized, regardless of who sits on the panel.
Chapter 4.6The closest CAS precedent to the standing and substantive questions raised by the vortex scenario is CAS 2002/O/373, Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Beckie Scott v. International Olympic Committee. The case is the leading authority on two points that are directly relevant: the standing of a third party to challenge a decision that affected her competitive interests, and the CAS's willingness to substitute its own decision for that of the original sporting body.
The facts were as follows. At the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Beckie Scott of Canada finished third in the women's 5km pursuit cross-country skiing event. The gold and silver medalists — both Russian — were subsequently found to have used banned substances. Scott argued that she should be elevated to gold, leapfrogging the cleaned-up results. The IOC initially declined; Scott and the COC petitioned the CAS.
The CAS panel held first that Scott had standing — she had a direct and personal interest in the result of the IOC's decision, as her competitive and financial position was directly affected by it. This standing determination was made under provisions equivalent to what this paper calls the R27 jurisdiction question: the panel confirmed that a directly affected third party has the right to challenge a sporting body's decision at the CAS, even where that body's own regulations did not explicitly contemplate such a challenge.[2]
The panel then exercised its R57 de novo review power to substitute its own decision, ultimately elevating Scott to gold. The IOC's original decision was replaced in its entirety.
The analogy to the vortex case is direct. New Zealand — eliminated by a bottleneck match whose result the CAS could find was structurally induced — occupies a position analogous to Beckie Scott: a directly affected third party whose classification interests were determined by events in which she did not participate. The standing doctrine from CAS 2002/O/373, and the de novo review power confirmed in that case, both apply.
Chapter 4.7The legal argument of this Part can be summarized in a chain of seven propositions, each supported by the analysis above:
Proposition 1. The 2026 World Cup format and calendar created a structural incentive for rational non-competitive play in Groups F through L. [Established in Parts I and II]
Proposition 2. FIFA's Disciplinary Code contains no provision that directly reaches this structural incentive. [Established in Part III]
Proposition 3. Swiss Civil Code Article 1 authorizes a CAS panel to create the applicable rule where the written law is silent, drawing on general principles of law including the duty of good faith in Article 2. [Established in Chapter 4.2]
Proposition 4. CAS Code Article R27 confirms the CAS's jurisdiction over claims arising from the bottleneck scenario, regardless of whether FIFA's Code addresses it. [Established in Chapter 4.4]
Proposition 5. CAS Code Article R37 provides a mechanism for emergency provisional measures — including suspension of a match result — within 24–72 hours of filing. [Established in Chapter 4.4]
Proposition 6. CAS Code Articles R44.3, R57, and R58 together provide the evidentiary, remedial, and applicable-law framework for a full hearing, including the authority to appoint SIT as official expert, to substitute FIFA's decisions with the panel's own, and to import appropriate legal principles from beyond FIFA's Code. [Established in Chapter 4.4]
Proposition 7. The probability of success — ranging from 30% to 78% depending on panel composition and evidence quality — is not a certainty, but it represents a risk that no institution managing a US$ 7 billion asset (the World Cup) can responsibly ignore. [Established in Chapter 4.5]
"FIFA created the vacuum. Swiss law provides the authority to fill it. The CAS Code provides the procedural mechanism. The SIT data provides the evidence. The only missing element is a federation prepared to act within the 48-hour window. The legal infrastructure is complete. The clock is running."
— SIT Sport Intelligence Terminal, June 2026