UEFA Competitions Revenue Distribution 2024/25

More Than This

The format of UEFA’s competitions will change next season with more teams taking part and more games being played.

This has been well known for some time, but the details of the revenue distribution system have only recently been confirmed. UEFA said that this came “at the end of a process held in cooperation with the European Club Association (ECA) and positive consultation with the European leagues”.

The new format takes some understanding, as indeed does the revenue distribution, so this blog will look at these in some detail, aiming to make them a little clearer to the proverbial “man on the street”.

Number of Clubs

The number of clubs in the Champions League will increase from 32 to 36 with the four new slots allocated as follows:

• Slot one: to the club ranked third in the fifth best league, which is determined by the UEFA association club coefficient ranking. This is currently France, so they would get three places in the group stage, rather than the previous two (with the third having to go through the qualifying stages).

• Slot two: to a domestic champion by extending the number of clubs qualifying via the Champions path of the qualifying process from four to five. This is designed to give domestic champions from “smaller” leagues more chance of reaching the group stage.

• Slots three and four: to the two national associations with the best overall performance by their clubs in the previous season, i.e. a slot to the club ranked next best in their domestic league behind those that have already qualified. At the moment, Italy are ranked highest in 2023/24 with England and Germany fighting it out for the second spot.

The addition that has generated most debate is the last one, as this acts as a sort of safety net for the bigger clubs, e.g. it would create a fifth qualifying slot for the Premier League (or indeed the other major leagues).

Intriguingly, this means that a club might have to rely on its rivals to go far in European competitions to help secure the additional place. As an example, Spurs would have to want Arsenal to do well in this season’s Champions League, so some supporters might consider the extra slot as a bit of a double-edged sword.

New Format

The established group stage with 32 clubs divided into eight groups of four will be replaced from 2024/25 by a single league competition of 36 clubs.

Under the old format, a team in the group stage would play three opponents twice (home and away), but will instead now play eight games against eight different opponents (four matches at home and four away).

To determine the eight opponents, the teams will be ranked in four seeding pots. Each team will then be drawn to play two opponents from each of these pots, playing one match against a team from each pot at home, and one away. Pot 1 will include the reigning UCL champions and the top eight clubs based on coefficient.

So each team will play two more games in the group stage, which will please the clubs’ accountants, but probably not the physios. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies, as this is less than the original proposal of a guaranteed 10 games in the league phase.