Champions League Prize Money: Without any hesitation, the Champions League is the biggest and most important clubs competition in football.
The tournament has given football fans plenty and plenty of emotions throughout the years, gaining more and more popularity over the course of the years, being compared to FIFA World Cup as the maximum trophy that a player can win during his career.
As we said earlier, the tournament is seen as the most important one when it comes to clubs, therefore, the logistic and organization must be exceptional and even more when we talk about prizes.
In Quarter-final , the struggle for victory in the Champions League continues to 8 clubs Real Madrid vs Barcelona, Juventus, Manchester City, Liverpool, Bayern München, Sevilla, Roma.
UEFA knows this and added to the fact that they have been adding more stages for the qualifiers, they have also added more money for revenues.
The Champions League prize money has to be -if it’s not yet- one of the biggest prizes in professional sports.
If you wonder how much money the next champion is going to make, here is the place. We’re about to break down the UEFA Champions League 2017/18 revenue distribution.
Just in case you don’t know, the UEFA itself released the Champions League revenue distribution system a couple of months ago.
Champions League 2017/18 Revenue Distribution Table
| Round | Prize money |
|---|---|
| Group stage for each 32 teams | €12.7m |
| Group stage bonus | €1.5m per win/€500,000 per draw |
| Last 16 | €6m |
| Quarter-final | €6.5m |
| Semi-final | €7.5m |
| Final | €15.5m winner – €11m runner-up |
| UEFA Super Cup | €4m winner – €3m runner-up |
| Market Pool | €507 million |
Champions League Market pool:
UEFA has announced €507 million in market pool prize money will be allocated to every participating clubs since the Group stages.
The UCL budget added to the ones for the Europa League and the UEFA Super Cup will be approximately €2.35bn.
Of that huge budget, the organization will allocate €1,318.9 million to Champions League clubs and the two squads who play the Super Cup.
So, this means the 32 teams that made it to the group stage received at least €12.7m each just for reaching that stage.
Depending on their wins and draws, they received €1.5m per win and €500,000 per draw.
We’re currently in the round of 16, so that means the participants are receiving an additional payout of €6 million.
Teams that reach the next round, quarter-finals, will be seeing the increase of €6.5m in prizes.
The four semi-finalists will get €7.5m each in their coffer and the final will perceive €26,5 million, with a winning prize money of €15.5 million while the runners-up will receive €11 million.
With all these revenues, the champion could be earning more than €57,2 million, a pretty good number that can help a team boost their squad or invest in upgrades for their installations.
If you compare that to its counterpart in South America, the difference is huge, as, in the direct competition of the Champions, the Libertadores Cup, prizes don’t even reach the €7 million for the champion.
There are some other factors that teams need to keep in mind and that will get them more money, but that’s more related to their market and the value they can bring to the cup seeing the television market they represent (from the group stage ahead).
The Champions League is out of any doubt the most important tournament in professional soccer and seeing its reputation, it’s normal to see that the organization always try to improve the next season. Its prize money is not exempt of that and this year they proved it again.
