A radical new Champions League, but the elite clubs still benefit the most financially

Never again a group like group C of the Champions League in the 2020-2021 season. Manchester City, FC Porto, Olympiakos and Olympique Marseille – on paper it didn’t look that bad. But the differences in strength turned out to be so great that after three of the six rounds it was clear what the final score would be. “Then you run the risk of fans losing interest,” says Giorgio Marchetti, UEFA’s director of football affairs, with a sense of understatement.

The Italian cites the example during a presentation on Thursday in a hotel near Schiphol about the new structure of the European club tournaments. Although Marchetti repeatedly emphasizes that the Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League are already great in their current form, he cannot avoid giving reasons why things must be radically different after the summer. The least controversial of these: the group stage of the Champions League, which covers more than three-quarters of the total number of matches, is often decided long before the final round. Gone tension, gone viewers.

UEFA is banning the existing pool system, the basis of the Champions League since 1992

That is why UEFA has banned the pool system, which has been the basis of the tournament since the first edition of the Champions League in 1992. In close consultation with the clubs, Marchetti hastens to say.

The new format, at least in the first phase, looks more like a classic competition. All Champions League participants find themselves in the same rankings. The standings after eight rounds determine who will qualify directly for the round of 16 (numbers 1 to 8), and which clubs can qualify through a playoff round (numbers 9 to 24). The European season is over for the twelve clubs at the bottom of the ranking. The Europa League and the Conference League will have a similar format.

Equal opponents

The following applies to all tournaments: the higher a club finishes in the rankings, the greater the chance of relatively favorable opponents towards the final. In this way, Marchetti thinks, something is at stake in every match and for every participating club. During the first ‘competition phase’ the resistance is the same for all participants. While the best clubs avoid each other in the group stage in the current model, from next season everyone will face approximately equally strong opponents on paper.

The latter seems to be a concession from the European football elite. But it is the top clubs such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich and Manchester City that have been complaining about the lack of mutual matches for some time. These are the duels that are interesting both commercially and sportingly.

That idea was also behind the Super League, the infamous and failed plan, created in 2021, by twelve top clubs from England, Spain and Italy to start a closed football competition outside UEFA and FIFA. In the new Champions League format, “top clashes”, as Marchetti calls it, are guaranteed from start to finish.

Soon 189 Champions League matches

The Italian carefully avoids the term Super League on Thursday. Yet the radical overhaul of European club tournaments is at least partly motivated by the fear that the big clubs themselves will create an alternative that is more commercially attractive. The new design is therefore primarily an attempt to generate more money. By making the Champions League more attractive, of course, but especially by playing more matches. This season there are 125 Champions League matches on the agenda, soon there will be 189, while players and associations already believe that the playing calendar is too full.

The exact revenues are not yet clear, but UEFA estimates that the three European club tournaments in the new format will generate around 4.4 billion euros annually in TV revenues and sponsorship money. Now that is 3.6 billion, an increase of over 22 percent. Impressive, until you consider that the number of matches increases by more than half. UEFA notices what European competitions have experienced before: the time of increasingly fatter television contracts in football seems to be over.

Revenue distribution remains heavily in favor of the clubs that play the Champions League as standard

At the same time, the distribution of income remains heavily in favor of the clubs that play the Champions League as standard. UEFA likes to point out the more than 300 million in ‘solidarity payments’, an amount that will be divided among the hundreds of smaller professional clubs that do not play European football. But there is little evidence of solidarity between the European elite and the sub-top. The Champions League participants are expected to distribute around 2.5 billion euros, compared to 565 million for the Europa League and 285 million for the Conference League. This means that the proportions remain more or less the same, but that the Champions League clubs will benefit the most in absolute terms, with the elite clubs benefiting the most.

Whether the new style Champions League will indeed be exciting from start to finish, as Marchetti promises, is therefore doubtful. The current predictability is only partly the result of the pool system. The core of the problem is that the differences in financial strength between the clubs have increased rapidly in recent years. That is why the chance of surprises in the Champions League is so small these days.

There is nothing to indicate that this will change from next season.

To share

Email the editor