Taking part in the UEFA Champions League can prove extremely lucrative for a football club.
As such, it’s treated as the pinnacle competition by Europe’s elite teams as strong performances can additionally bring in more income, especially if a club reaches the latter stages of the tournament.
For the 2023/24 campaign, competition organizers announced the total purse for this season’s Champions League would stay the same as last season, at €2.03 billion (£1.74bn/$2.19bn).
The Sporting News brings you a full breakdown of the prize money allocations for group-stage and knockout-stage participants in the 2023/24 Champions League.
MORE: List of every team to have qualified for 2024/25 Champions League
Champions League prize money 2023/24
Last season, first-time winners Manchester City picked up around €80 million (£68.4m/$86.4m) in prize money during the tournament as a whole.
This time around, the 2023/2024 Champions League winner — Real Madrid — could have been paid a maximum total of €85.14m, but that would have required the winning side to have had a perfect campaign from start to finish.
Overall there are several different ways in which sides participating in the competition can gain prize money. The biggest wedge of money (55%) of the total prize pot is distributed amongst the clubs as a reward for their results in the competition as outlined below in the table. The other 45% of the pool is split across the complete 32 group-stage participants in two separate ways.
Performance-based prize money (55% of total)
| Stage | Prize Money |
|---|---|
| Winner | €20m (£17.2m/$21.5m) |
| Runner-up | €15.5m (£12.9m/$16.12m) |
| Semifinalists | €12.5m (£10.8m/$13.2m) |
| Quarterfinalists | €10.6m (£9.1m/$11.4m) |
| Round of 16 | €9.6m (£8.3m/$10.3m) |
| Group-stage wins | €2.8m (£2.4m/$3m) |
| Group-stage draws | €930k (£800k/$1m) |
| Reaching group stage | €15.6m (£13.5m/$16.8m) |
Coefficient payout (30% of total)
Some 30% of the prize money (around €600m) is paid out to all 32 clubs in the Champions League group stage based on a coefficient algorithm that ranks their European performance over a 10-year period.
The teams are then ranked according to this algorithm from No. 1 to No. 32, with bonus points given for hoisting European trophies, before the money is paid out in shares according to a team’s rank. The lowest-ranked team earns one share (€1.137m), while the top-ranked team earns 32 shares (€36.38m).
Broadcast market payout (15% of total)
An additional €300m (15% of the total purse) is made available as part of the broadcast revenue once all the broadcast deals are finalised across the continent.
The national federation for each country represented in the UEFA Champions League is provided with a share of this money based on the proportional value of each TV market. Each national federation then distributes that money to the participating Champions League clubs based on:
- 50% of the allocation to a national federation will be divided among the participating Champions League clubs from that nation based on fixed percentages determined by UEFA.
- The other 50% is paid out in proportion to the number of matches played by each club in 2023/24.