The economics of the Champions League (through a different lens)
An overview of revenues and UEFA prize money for participating clubs – and some reflections
Jacopo Carmassi – Numeri in Palla Column, Social Media Soccer / Social Football Summit, June 3, 2026
English version prepared by editorial team
The Champions League final took place last Saturday, so in this new edition of Numeri in Palla, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to focus on Europe’s premier competition. However, I won’t be talking about penalty shootouts, even though I am tempted to mention Marquinhos’ beautiful gesture, comforting Gabriel after his decisive miss from the spot—long live sportsmanship and respect, always. Instead, I will discuss the Champions League from a different perspective, as always in this column—and, as always, with the help of data.
European Leagues, the association representing professional football leagues across Europe, has included a key objective in its strategic priorities for the 2026-2027 period: countering the growing sporting and financial polarization that benefits a limited number of elite clubs. Specifically, they are targeting the effects of international club competitions, their impact on domestic leagues, and the preservation of competitive balance. This is undoubtedly one of the most fiercely debated topics regarding the present and future of European football.
The subject is highly complex. In this edition of Numeri in Palla, I will focus on a specific aspect—the economic and financial dimension—while keeping in mind that the broader ecosystem faces other pressing issues, such as fixture congestion and calendar overcrowding. Furthermore, this analysis does not claim to exhaustively cover every financial nuance related to the Champions League and UEFA club competitions. The more targeted goal is to put hard numbers on the table to provide a clear macro-picture of some critical dynamics. Before diving into the data, let’s start with a few conceptual reflections.
One question, multiple answers
The core question is simple, and I want to pose it in a radical, intentionally provocative way: are the massive financial benefits tied to a club’s participation in UEFA competitions a good or a bad thing for the football ecosystem?
The first answer is obvious: it is not just good, it is excellent. It rewards clubs that have achieved significant milestones on the pitch within their domestic leagues. They are compensated, also based on their sporting merit in European competitions, using the very resources these clubs help generate by participating. On one hand, the financial reward provides tangible recognition for sporting merit; on the other, it gives beneficiary clubs greater financial flexibility. These resources can be crucial for an array of expenditures and investments, ranging from the transfer market to structural investments which are crucial at both club and system levels, such as infrastructure, youth academies, and women’s football.
The second answer, keeping the focus on qualified clubs, is: it depends. To the extent that a club’s financial management is not fundamentally rooted in sustainability principles—and instead views potential UEFA prize money as its sole or ultimate financial lifeline—a major issue arises. If qualifying for a UEFA competition becomes a vital necessity to avoid financial distress, it often triggers a vicious cycle: unsustainable spending driven by the hope of winning the “qualification gamble.” In such cases, UEFA prize money might largely go toward covering player wages that far exceed what the club can actually afford, rather than being channeled into expenditures or investments of different nature. And what if the gamble fails? Clearly, the risk is particularly high when UEFA prize money accounts for a very significant share of a club’s revenues and costs.
The third answer concerns clubs that are typically not involved in the race to qualify for European competitions. Here, the take is entirely different. Clubs in a domestic league that do not regularly participate in European competitions, and have extremely low or near-zero probabilities of qualifying, find themselves competing against entities that, even without factoring in UEFA prize money, operate on a vastly superior economic scale, as seen in a previous Numeri in Palla piece on the “Revenue League.” UEFA prize money significantly expands this chasm.
Consequently, from the perspective of small and mid-sized clubs, the UEFA prize money distributed to elite teams poses severe challenges to organizations with more modest financial capabilities. If this holds true for established top-flight mid-sized clubs, it applies even more to newly promoted teams from the second tier, for whom weathering the financial shock is already complicated. It becomes nearly impossible when competing against teams that consistently receive UEFA prize money year after year. If you are thinking of Como’s recent rise: precisely because it is an extremely rare anomaly, it rightfully garners attention and admiration—how many “Como cases” do we actually see?
The fourth answer looks at the football ecosystem as a whole. As mentioned, massive UEFA payouts widen the economic and financial gap between participating and non-participating clubs. The question is not only whether it is fair or desirable for this gap to widen, but whether the magnitude of this widening serves the collective interest of the industry. If the financial disparity becomes excessive, it risks destroying the unpredictability of domestic league matches. When unpredictability plummets, everyone suffers, including the giant clubs, due to a decline in overall engagement, which might translate into lower revenues across the board, including a stagnation or drop in TV rights.
According to some, part of the solution could be reducing the size of Serie A from 20 to 18 or even 16 clubs. From another viewpoint, this is not necessarily a silver bullet. While the Bundesliga operates with 18 clubs, the Premier League and LaLiga maintain 20 teams, and their media rights have either grown or held steady. Meanwhile, France’s Ligue 1, whose TV rights recently collapsed, shifted from 20 to 18 clubs starting in the 2023/2024 season. Perhaps the additional question we should ask is whether TV rights would grow—or at least avoid contraction risks—if domestic leagues were more balanced, regardless of the number of participating clubs.
Let’s conclude this section with a reflection on the role of domestic leagues. In recent years, we have grown accustomed to seeing massive celebrations during the final matchdays just for securing a European spot. In essence, multiple sub-leagues have formed within domestic top flights: the Scudetto race, the battle for the Champions League spots, the Europa League and Conference League tiers, and the relegation dogfight. In the middle, a few clubs sail through calm mid-table waters. Qualification for Europe has thus become a critical milestone, not just for the sporting achievement itself, but because qualification and its associated prize money can completely alter a club’s financial and sporting destiny. In practice, for a select group of clubs that can realistically aspire to European football, domestic top flights have become a means to an end, rather than just the ultimate objective. Would this hold true if UEFA prize money were substantially lower?
A benefit for today, a risk for tomorrow?
The UEFA resources distributed are generated by the competitions the clubs participate in, making it entirely logical that these clubs are properly compensated. However, for the reasons outlined above, this approach can generate collateral damage that may ultimately harm the football ecosystem. In the medium-to-long term, this could even negatively impact the very clubs currently benefiting from lucrative UEFA payouts: today’s financial advantage could yield tomorrow’s economic damage. In this light, the widespread slowdown in media rights is a warning sign that should not be ignored.
What approach could offer an optimal balance, maximizing benefits while mitigating side effects? The distribution of UEFA solidarity payments to non-participating clubs directly addresses the need to support the rest of the pyramid using resources generated by elite competitions. These payments have been increased recently, currently sitting at just over €300 million per season, plus roughly €130 million distributed to clubs eliminated in the qualifying rounds. However, these funds are divided among all national associations, which then redistribute them to clubs. Meanwhile, approximately €2.4 billion is distributed strictly to the 36 clubs reaching the Champions League single-league phase—and the top three highest earners combined take home nearly €400 million, a figure greater than the solidarity pot meant for all non-participating clubs across all UEFA member nations.
An ideal solution is objectively difficult to pinpoint. It is crucial to emphasize that these discussions should not be framed as being “for” or “against” anyone, but rather for the health of the entire industry. Whichever path is taken, finding a solution requires two inevitable steps: first, establishing a crystal-clear picture of the situation; second, agreeing that there is actually a problem to solve, which is far from a given. This edition of Numeri in Palla aims to provide that comprehensive picture of the situation, which may then serve as a basis for possible reflections.
The revenues of the 36 clubs (the wealthy win)
Having established the conceptual groundwork, let’s look at the financial figures for the clubs that participated in the UEFA Champions League, from the single-league phase onward, during the 2024-2025 season. We are looking at the prior season rather than the one just concluded because official audited financial data is fully available for 2024-2025, whereas we must still wait for the complete 2025-2026 data. Specifically, we will analyze two metrics: the total revenue volume of the 36 clubs in the single-league phase, compiled from official club financial statements or official league reports, and the prize money distributed by UEFA to these 36 clubs, taken from the 2024/2025 UEFA Financial Report.
Three quick premises must be made. First, data from the Europa League and Conference League also provides valuable insights, but Champions League figures are vastly higher, making them particularly interesting for our purposes. Second, regarding club revenues, accounting methodologies can vary across borders, even for a seemingly straightforward metric like “revenue.” It would be highly beneficial if all European clubs adopted uniform reporting standards. For instance, capital gains from player transfers (plusvalenze), which are included in this analysis, are handled differently depending on the country’s accounting rules, and are therefore often omitted in cross-border comparisons. I chose to include them here, as this variance does not systematically alter the macro-trends or the core message. Third, this analysis zeroes in on revenue, but cost data would show a substantially similar pattern, though the cost-to-revenue ratio varies by club, (with costs frequently outstripping revenues, to varying degrees).
Let’s begin by comparing the revenues of the top 5 highest-earning clubs against the bottom 5 within the 36-team single-league phase of the 2024-2025 Champions League, which was the inaugural season of the new format. The top 5 clubs—Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, and Arsenal—had combined revenues of approximately €5 billion. To give a benchmark, the total revenues of all 20 Serie A clubs combined in the same season stood at around €4 billion. The bottom 5 clubs in the revenue ranking—Sturm Graz, Dinamo Zagreb, Shakhtar Donetsk, Sparta Prague, and Slovan Bratislava—recorded a combined revenue of around €350 million. Naturally, Shakhtar Donetsk’s figures are tragically impacted by the ongoing war, but the structural picture remains unchanged even if we swap them for the sixth-lowest revenue club, Brest, which pushes the bottom group’s combined revenue to roughly €375 million.
The revenue ratio between the top 5 and bottom 5 clubs is therefore over 14 times, and over 13 times if we use Brest’s data (which is why today’s jersey number is 13). In Serie A, as seen in a previous edition of Numeri in Palla, the ratio between the top 5 and bottom 5 clubs for revenue stood at 7.5 times during the 2024/2025 season. The economic disparity among Champions League clubs is therefore nearly double that of Serie A.
Naturally, this chasm is not confined to the extremes. If we split the 36 clubs right down the middle, comparing the top 18 highest-earning clubs against the bottom 18, the ratio is roughly 4.5 times, which is higher than the corresponding figure for Serie A, where the ratio is 3.8 when comparing the top 10 and bottom 10. On average, a club in the top 18 generated roughly €670 million in revenue, compared to just under €150 million for the bottom 18.
Behind these averages lie massive individual variances, with the top 5 all generating over €900 million, Real Madrid eclipsing the €1 billion mark, mid-table clubs ranked 16th to 20th sitting between €260 million and €360 million, and the bottom 7 clubs all operating below €100 million.
The trend is quite: the economic gap between Clubs participating to the Champions League is very significant. Furthermore, Clubs with higher overall revenues are generally those with more on-pitch longevity in the tournament, which in turn triggers higher prize money. For the 2024-2025 season, the 12 clubs with the highest total revenues included all 8 teams that reached the quarter-finals, plus two that reached the round of 16. Within this elite financial top 12, only Manchester City and Juventus failed to reach the round of 16, both being eliminated in the knockout round play-offs. Looking at round-of-16 qualification, only a few lower-revenue clubs managed to break through, down to PSV Eindhoven, twenty-fourth in revenue, and Club Brugge, twenty-eighth.
Conversely, clubs at the bottom of the revenue ranking achieved very poor results. None of the bottom 5 revenue clubs advanced past the single-league phase, finishing 25th or lower. Of the bottom 10 revenue clubs, only two, Brest (18th) and Club Brugge (24th, the last spot available), progressed. Slovan Bratislava, the lowest revenue club, finished 35th out of 36, losing all eight matches. Young Boys, twenty-ninth in revenue, finished rock bottom in 36th place, also losing every single match. Sparta Prague, second-lowest revenue, finished 31st, recording just one win and one draw alongside six losses.
Prize money for the 36 Clubs (and the impact on the economic gap)
Now let’s look at the actual prize money distributed by UEFA to the 36 clubs during the 2024/2025 Champions League, excluding the €9 million combined payout awarded to Real Madrid and Atalanta for the UEFA Super Cup. Crucially, the 2024/2025 season marked the introduction of UEFA’s revamped prize distribution methodology. This reform shifted balances by increasing the weight of sporting performance on the pitch from 30% to 37.5%, and fixed participation fees from 25% to 27.5%. Meanwhile, it reduced the impact of historical coefficients and TV markets by merging them into a single metric, the Value Pillar, which dropped to a 35% share, down from a combined 45% previously.
In 2024/2025, the total prize pool distributed reached approximately €2.4 billion. 25.6% of the total, roughly €620 million, went to the top 5 prize earners: Paris Saint-Germain and Inter, the finalists; Arsenal and Barcelona, the semi-finalists; and Bayern Munich, who reached the quarter-finals. The bottom 5 prize earners received a combined €138.5 million, representing 5.7% of the total pool. Paris Saint-Germain, who won the competition, received €144.4 million, while Slovan Bratislava took home the lowest amount at just under €22 million. The top seven clubs earned over €100 million each; 16 clubs fell into the €50 million to €100 million bracket; the remaining 13 clubs received under €50 million each.
On average, the top 5 prize-earning clubs took home 4.5 times more than the bottom 5. The top 18 clubs averaged more than double the earnings of the bottom 18. Remarkably, out of the 13 clubs with the highest overall revenues, 12 were also part of the top 13 prize-earning group. The financial gap is widening not only among Champions League participants themselves but also between these teams and their domestic rivals.
If the wealthiest teams are those always, or almost always, reaching the deepest knockout rounds, it remains to be seen which effects the distribution reform kicked off in the 2024/2025 season, which favors on-pitch results over historical rankings and TV markets, will produce over time.
Apropos of the prize distribution methodology, in March 2026, the Union of European Clubs, the association aiming to representing small and mid-sized European football clubs, put forward a radical reform proposal regarding UEFA’s distribution mechanism for UEFA competitions. This proposal (illustrated here) outlines a significant reallocation, reducing the Champions League prize share from roughly 74% to 50%, while increasing the Europa League share from 17% to 30%, and the Conference League share from around 9% to 20%. Furthermore, the historical coefficient and TV market size factors would be entirely abolished, meaning the 35% share allocated to the Value Pillar would be redirected into the fixed participation pot. This would drive the fixed pot up from 27.5% to 62.5%, therefore more than doubling it. The share based on sporting results (37.5%) would remain unchanged relative to the current system and would continue to be distributed only to the Clubs participating to UEFA club competitions.
Instead, the fixed partecipation share would not only be larger but would also be distributed via national leagues in equal parts among clubs, with 85% shared equally among all first-division clubs and 15% split equally among all second-tier clubs. This would offer an economic benefit also to clubs that do not qualify for Europe – and such benefit would be higher than the current UEFA solidarity payments, which would be replaced by the new mechanism.
Overall, this proposal would bring a massive redistribution of resources, heavily flattening financial disparities within domestic leagues, Champions League participants would however be strongly penalised relative to the current system. For example, Italian clubs participating in the 2024/2025 Champions League would have seen their prize money more than halved, with some clubs experiencing drops of over 60% or even 70%. Consequently, it is very difficult to say whether a mechanism of this nature will ever be concretely implemented, but the proposal highlights how different choices on the methodology for prize allocation can produce profoundly different overall effects.
How heavily do Champions League payouts weigh on club revenues?
If we look at the impact of UEFA Champions League prize money on a club’s financial, independent of cross-club comparisons, the landscape is highly heterogeneous. Even if a club’s prize money in abosulte value is much lower compared to elite teams, its relative weight within that club may be very significant. For example, for several clubs, the ratio between Champions League prize money and total seasonal revenue was close to or even exceeded 50%, as was the case, for instance for Brest, Slovan Bratislava, Dinamo Zagreb, and Sparta Prague.
For 13 clubs, this reliance sat between 20% and 40%, for 16 clubs it ranged between 10% and 20%, and for 2 clubs, Real Madrid and Manchester City, it accounted for a around 8% of total revenues. Clearly, very high payouts in absolute value may not translate into high ratios if revenues are very high. Conversely, relatively lower prize money may lead to higher ratios if revenues and relatively low.
Therefore, two points are clear: first, the absolute value of prizes tends to widen the economic and financial gap; second, the impact on the finances of a Club can be particularly high if revenues are lower, even if the prizes are relatively lower.
This brings us to point: clubs that receive lower Champions League prizes relative to other Clubs in the same competition may still receive a very significant contribution relative to their economic size and to the economic size of their domestic league. In other words,for clubs of certain domestic leagues, merely qualifying for the Champions League (or actually also for the Europa League or Conference League), may significantly widen the economic gap in domestic leagues event to a degree that might become virtually unbridgeable for their local competitors. And, importantly, this may happen even if a Club ends up in the last positions in the European competition table. In practice, the mere participation of a Club to a European club competition – regardless of sporting results within that tournament – can fundamentally alter the competitive balance of its domestic football league.
To counter this specific risk, the UEC proposed another mechanism in November 2025: if the total resources obtained by a domestic league’s clubs through UEFA media rights exceed that league’s own domestic TV rights value, then 35% of that surplus would be redistributed within the domestic league. According to UEC calculations, this scenario applies to over 30 of the 55 UEFA member associations. Clearly, like their proposal for an overall reform of the UEFA prize distribution mechanism, it is difficult to say whether and to what extent a mechanism of this type, with a strong redistribution nature, will ever find concrete application. In any case, the proposal provides an interesting contribution that helps better understand the nature and the magnitude of the issue.
The final question (for you)
I hope I have effectively achieved my goal of offering an overview of the situation, and from a different perspective. In your view, is there a problem to be solved, or not?
Jacopo Carmassi is Principal Economist at the European Central Bank and an expert in economic and financial matters in football. All opinions expressed on Social Media Soccer and the Social Football Summit are strictly personal and do not implicate in any way the European Central Bank nor any other entity to which the author is affiliated.
