Italian Serie A club Juventus topped the Uefa Champions League prize money table for the 2016-17 season, with English Premier League team Leicester City edging winner Real Madrid into third place in revenues handed out by European football’s governing body.
Uefa has detailed the breakdown of payments made for the 2016-17 seasons of the Champions League and Europa League, with the figures again spelling out the importance of value of broadcast rights deals in respective national markets.
The payments represented the second in the current three-year cycle of Champions League and Europa League broadcast and sponsorship deals covering the 2015-16 to 2017-18 seasons. The clubs that took part in the 2016-17 Champions League group stage, and the 10 eliminated in the playoffs, shared more than €1.396bn ($1.663bn) in payments from Uefa.
Under the distribution system for the 2015-18 commercial cycle, which was introduced in 2015-16, all net revenue from the club competitions is centralised and reallocated to the Champions League and Europa League clubs. Sixty per cent is distributed in fixed amounts, while the remaining 40 per cent is distributed in variable amounts calculated on the basis of the commercial value of each national market.
Juventus was beaten 4-1 by Real in the Champions League final but gained €110.434m from Uefa, €58.826m of which came in market pool payments. Uefa awarded a basic fee of €12.7m to each of the 32 Champions League teams, plus bonuses for results and a share of broadcast rights money known as the market pool.
Leicester exited at the quarter-final stage, but the strength of the UK broadcast rights deal allowed it to gain €81.681m, €49.073m of which was from the market pool. Real Madrid was paid €81.051m, with €26.17m coming from the market pool.
In the Europa League, trophy winner Manchester United generated more than double the revenue of the next highest-paid club. More than €423.1m in payments from Uefa were shared by the 56 clubs that took part in the Europa League group stage and/or knockout phase – compared with over €411.1m in 2015-16.
United gained €44.503m from their 2-0 final win over Dutch Eredivisie club Ajax, with €29.649m of this figure coming from the market pool. By contrast, the next highest revenue-generating club, German Bundesliga team Schalke 04, secured €17.735m, of which €10.28m came from the market pool. Spanish LaLiga team Celta Vigo landed €16.997m, with €9.085m from the market pool.
Uefa and the European Club Association have agreed on a new distribution model for the 2018-21 cycle when revenues are expected to grow significantly. The new model will better reward teams that advance further into the competition, and is weighted to favour clubs that have won European titles since Uefa launched club competitions in 1955.