Sport

Mega Champions League cash breakdown for Rangers

Published

7 months ago

February 10, 2024

The last time both Celtic and Rangers competed in the Champions League in the same season in 22/23, Celtic earned around €30m from participation while Rangers only earned around €20m – despite Celtic only picking up only two points more than Rangers’ zero.

This was attributable to the distribution of funds through the 10-year coefficient, as Rangers had the second lowest 10-year ranking in the tournament and so received only €2.3m; while Celtic, even with the eighth lowest ranking, still received a huge €9.1m. Should both qualify for the new 36-team league phase next season then this distribution will be markedly different, as UEFA have announced their budget for 2024/25 – following its successful sign-off by the member associations. It seems like we are gearing up for the first genuine title race between the Old Firm in the Scottish Premiership since season 2010/11 when Rangers won the league by one point on the final day of the season.

Of course, for the fans of both sides – the prestige and glory of winning the league trophy far outweighs the financial rewards their club will reap. However, the financial importance of the automatic Champions League place that comes with winning the title cannot be overstated – with the new format bringing more guaranteed money than ever before. With Southampton receiving over £100m in TV money for finishing bottom in the EPL, our top sides are heavily dependent on Champions League qualification to narrow the economic gap between themselves and most other European Leagues.

Celtic have been a financially very well-run club for years and had more cash in the bank – £72million – than almost all English Premier League clubs. However even they are well aware of the impact of not making the Champions League, with Peter Lawwell stating in the Celtic annual reports that the enormous cash buffer was in place because “history tells us that we will not always qualify for the Champions League”

We now have a better idea of just how much the impact of qualification will be as UEFA have stated their conservative estimate for total men’s club competition revenue is a massive €4.5billion (up from €3.5 BILLION this year) – although they do caveat these figures should be treated with caution due to “the sales process still ongoing and contracts yet to be concluded for some important markets”.

Celtic non-executive chairman Peter Lawwell

Not all of that €4.5billion will be distributed to the competing clubs, as there are several deductions that must be accounted for first, for example UEFA’s own cut of course increases, with their organisational costs rising from €323m to €387, and the money “reserved for European Football to remain with UEFA” increasing from €188m to €230m.

In promising news for all Scottish clubs, firstly the money for clubs eliminated in qualifying will rise 25 per cent from €105m to €132m. The solidarity payments – money awarded to ALL clubs that DON’T participate in league phase football – goes up a massive 120 per cent, from €140m to €308m. This should mean as much as £1.5m for every SPFL club that doesn’t reach a European League phase next season.

That still leaves a massive €3.3bn available to the competing clubs, with Champions League clubs taking a massive 75 per cent of the funds, with the Europa League receiving only 17 per cent. The Conference League is thrown relative crumbs – amounting to only eight per cent of the total.

On an individual club basis, the money within each competition is split into three distribution streams:

starting payment (equal for all clubs in the competition)
performance related payment (money earned per point in the group stage & for progression through the competition)
and lastly the newly formed “value” stream, which is a merger of the previous 10-year coefficient + TV market pool streams.

Looking first at the starting fee, money shared equally by all teams before a ball is kicked, this is expected to rise by 20 per cent in the Champions League from €15.64m to €18.84m per club. This is compared with the estimated Europa League starting fee, increasing from only €3.63m to €4.31m while the Conference league starting fee sees the smallest rise from €2.94m to around €3.16m.

Moving on to the second stream – the performance related fixed amount, which will receive the biggest overall rise of 54 per cent in the Champions League. Despite this huge increase, the amount per group stage win for each club will actually decrease, due to the number of group stage matches also increasing by 50 per cent, from 96 to 144. A win will now be worth €2.1m and a draw €0.7m, but each club will have 8 matches instead of 6 to try and put points on the board – and money in the bank.

La Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy are reporting every single team in the Champions League will receive an additional payment depending on where they finish in the 36-team league. 1st-8th place is expected to receive €2m, while everyone from 9th-36th will receive an extra €1m. There’s also believed to be a payment linked to “placement in national championships”, with the clubs receiving an additional between €1m and €10m. That essentially takes the starting payment to more than €20m per club, even if they finish last with zero points. That’s more than Rangers received for reaching the Europa League final – and there’s still another distribution stream on top of this.

The last of the three streams is the new “value” stream which will have less weighting this year (35%) so that there is less reward for historical performance and a country’s TV market. La Gazzetta dello Sport believes that it will include a complex ranking system of the 36 teams, based on the national market pool AND the individual clubs coefficient over the last five years.

There will be 36 shares with the top ranked team receiving around €37m and the bottom ranked team only one share of about €1m. This will be especially good news for Rangers who should end this season at least 26th in the five-year coefficient, whereas rivals Celtic will end no higher than 69th. This is why Rangers’ guaranteed earnings could massively exceed Celtic’s, as Rangers could realistically expect to be in the top half of this ranking methodology and so could receive anywhere between €10-20m, whereas Celtic would be lower down this ranking and so expect to earn somewhere around €5m.

Notably for Rangers, it’ll also be the first season where they have ranked above Celtic in the 10-year coefficient for over a decade.