Oh, the UEFA crisis!
UEFA will shower the clubs that participate in their competitions in the next season 2018/19 with a rain of millions. The teams will receive a total of 2,550 million euros, of which 2,040 million will be distributed among those who compete in the Champions League and the Super Cup, and the remaining 510 million euros will go to participating clubs in the Europa League, according to the distribution made public by the association.
The highest body in European football increases by 48% the funds allocated to clubs compared to the previous season, which received 1,718 million. Also, the commercial revenues (television rights, sponsors, merchandising and others) go up, since they go from the 2,350 million that UEFA received last season to 3,250 million in 2018/19. Almost nothing hein? UEFA has also markedly changed the distribution of revenues as the competition progresses, and according to a new ranking that ensures additional fixed income, depending on the place occupied by each club. Real Madrid leads the classification, and Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid occupy the second and fourth place respectively.
Each of the 32 clubs that qualify for the group stage of the Champions will receive a fixed sum of 15.25 million euros (2.55 million more than in 2017). There are also considerable increases for results: the amounts for victory increase (from 1.5 to 2.7 million), for a tie (from 500,000 to 900,000 euros), for qualifying to eighths (from 6 to 9,5 million), to fourth (from 6.5 to 10.5 million), to semifinals (from 7.5 to 12 million) and to the final (from 11 to 15 million). Only for the champion the prize is lower: four million euros compared to 4.5 of the previous season. The two clubs that qualify for the UEFA Super Cup will receive 3.5 million euros each, and the winner will take an additional million.
In addition, UEFA has introduced a new ranking according to the performance of each club in the last ten years, which will allocate an additional pot of 585 million between the 32 participating teams of the Champions. The last team on the list will receive a fee of 1.1 million euros, and so progressively to the team with the best ranking that will receive an additional 35.46 million. Since Real Madrid occupies the first place in this ranking, if it wins the Champions and all the matches of the competition can take a maximum of 130 million euros, while the last team in the ranking that lost all the matches will take a minimum of 16.36 million euros. To make matters worse, apart from these revenues, there are another 292 million euros of the so-called market pool, which will be distributed according to the proportional value of each television market represented by the clubs that take part in the UEFA Champions League (of the group phase onwards). The different market shares will be distributed among the participating clubs of each federation. Too much millions at stake?