Participating in the UEFA Champions League can be extremely lucrative for a football club.
For this reason, it is considered the pinnacle competition by Europe's elite teams, as strong performances can bring in additional revenue, especially if a club reaches the later stages of the tournament.
For the extended 2024/25 season, the organizers of the competition announced an increase in the total prize money for this year’s Champions League to 2.437 billion euros (2.71 billion USD/2.06 billion GBP) from 2.03 billion euros ($2.19 billion/£1.74 billion) in 2023/24.
The main reason for this is that 36 teams will compete in the new league phase, compared to 32 in the traditional group phase.
Sporting News brings you a full breakdown of the prize money distribution for the participants in the league phase and the knockout phase of the 2024/25 Champions League.
MORE: List of all teams that have qualified for the 2024/25 Champions League
Prize money for the 2024/25 Champions League
Last season, the maximum prize pool available to eventual winners Real Madrid was €85.14 million, but Carlo Ancelotti's team could only have achieved this if they had won every single game in the competition.
Overall, there are several different ways in which teams participating in the competition can win prize money. The majority of the total prize pot is distributed among the clubs as a reward for their results in the competition, as shown in the table below.
Performance-related Prize money accounts for 37.5% (914 million €) of the total pot, which is proportionally down from the 55% of last season. The main reason for this change is the newly created Value pillar and takes up 35%.
The other 27.5% of the pool consists of equal shares — Entry feewhich will be distributed among the 36 clubs in the league phase
Performance-related prize money (37.5% of the total)
| stage | Prize money (per club) |
|---|---|
| winner | €25 million ($27.8 million) |
| Second | €18.5 million ($20.5 million) |
| Semi-finalists | €15 million ($16.6 million) |
| Quarterfinalists | €12.5 million ($13.9 million) |
| Round of 16 | €11 million ($12.2 million) |
| Reaching the knockout playoff round | €1 million ($1.1 million) |
| Victories in the league phase | €2.1 million ($2.3 million) |
| League phase draws | €700,000 ($777,883) |
In addition, teams will be paid a new League Rank Bonus based on their finishing position in the League Stage. The League Rank Bonus will be split into 666 equal shares, originally valued at €275,000, with the team that finishes in 36th place taking home that one share. The team that finishes in 35th place will receive two shares, and so on until the team that finishes in top position receives 36 shares. The unpaid €700,000 from each drawn match will increase the value of the shares allocated to each position proportionally.
Value pillar (35% of total value)
This explains €853 million of the prize pot and is a combination of the payments related to the coefficients of each club and the distributions on the transfer market. The value column is divided into two parts: a European part and a non-European part.
The amounts allocated will be proportional to the outcome of the sales of media rights in UEFA markets and markets outside the governing body's jurisdiction completed by 1 July 2024. In an example given by UEFA in its competition literature, if European markets contributed 75% of the total media rights, the value pillar would be split accordingly, 75% for the European part and 25% for the non-European part.
In the European part, the participating countries are ranked according to the contribution of their national broadcasters to total media revenue. The clubs from these countries are then ranked according to their performance in UEFA competitions over the last five seasons. In addition, a separate ranking is created for each participating club based on the UEFA coefficient for the last five years. The average placing of each club in these two rankings results in them occupying positions 1 to 36.
As with the league ranking bonus, the European part is split into 666 shares and distributed accordingly, from first place to the team ranked 36th upwards. The non-European part also uses the share system and is distributed according to each team's 10-year UEFA coefficient. These coefficients do not include the bonus points for titles, which were included in UEFA's calculations for the 2021-24 cycle.
Equal shares – entry fee (27.5% of the total amount)
This last section is worth €670 millionAccording to UEFA: “Each of the 36 clubs qualifying for the league phase can expect a league phase allocation of 18.62 million €divided into a deposit of 17.87 million € and a balance of 750,000 €.
How to buy Champions League tickets 2024/25
As soon as dates and times for the Champions League matches are confirmed, ticket sales will begin. With the exception of the final itself, tickets for European matches cannot be purchased directly from UEFA.
Instead, the primary ticket sales will be handled by the participating clubs themselves, so fans can easily access them as they would at other games.
Once tickets have been distributed, fans can still purchase tickets on the secondary market. StubHub International is the best place to buy tickets to Champions League matches.
