Another excerpt copied for avoidingthedrop.com - don't know how to insert link so you get that light blue square with the writing in it and the newspaper icon at the top, sorry.
UEFA publishes the monetary breakdown of the money distribution each year in the July edition of their UEFA Direct Magazine (PDF), and the numbers are actually rather interesting. Just for entering the Champions League group stage a team gets 3 million Euros. For getting into the group stage of the UEFA Cup last season teams got €215,000. That’s a massive difference right there, and really means the difference between a smaller team being able to buy 4-5 new players, and only being able to supplement wages for the players.
There is then a participation payout that Champions League teams get, which is €400,000 per match, equaling €2.4 million, assuming a team plays all 6 of their group matches (why wouldn’t they?). However in the UEFA Cup, there is no participation cash, just a performance bonus. CSKA Moscow got €160,000 for winning all 4 of their group stage matches.
Of course though, the Champions League has performance bonuses too, €600,000 per win, and €300,000 per draw. Lucking out and winning a single match in the Champions League nets you more money than all but 8 of the UEFA Cup group stage teams. Of the eight teams who made over a million Euros, four of them came from the Champions League group stages. The other four were well sized clubs from England, Germany, Italy, and France.
There is also the added factor of drawing massive European teams to your home stadium in the Champions League, which of course brings more revenue. Bringing a team like Barcelona to your stadium is certainly going to give you more ticket revenue than probably any of last years UEFA Cup teams (save for AC Milan).
There is one final monetary payout the both competitions have, and that is the Market Pool. The description of how it’s formulated is a little confusing, but I’m assuming it has to deal with the distibution of TV money and various other things. However it’s dealt out, it’s dealt out in large sums.
PSV Eindhoven, who won 1 match and came in last in their group got €19 million. Don’t let that fool you, because eventual champions Barcelona got just €8 million of the Market Pool money. However, the market pool money only went to the final eight UEFA Cup squads, and maxed out just under €5 million for some clubs.
The final number that sticks out is the overall tally for each competition, Champions League teams made almost €600 million combined last season, while the UEFA Cup teams combined for a meager €37 million.
There are plenty of other numbers there, and feel free to explore the document I posted for more breakdown on the numbers, as it’s a pretty interesting read. The main point here is that there is such an incredible gulf in terms of cash flow between the two competitions that the Europa League seems like a joke. I fully understand the reason Martin O’Neil put out a bunch of second and third team players last season, there was no point in playing matches for such little money when they had a Champions League berth at stake which would have multiplied the money they made last year by about 20x.
While the Champions League is obviously the breadwinner of the two competitions, there shouldn’t be as big of a gulf between the compensation for the two. UEFA Cup (and Europa League) involves a good number more matches and typically a lot more travel since there are a higher number of nations in the competition and they’re more spread out.
I’m not saying the money should be split 50/50 as there aren’t the revenues from Europa League to even justify a split anywhere near that, but you could easily double the payouts given to teams and I doubt many people would really even notice. I wasn’t an advocate for the new way of seeding the final group stage qualifiers the way they are, but looking at the numbers how they are, I very much am.
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