Why is it important to finish in the top four of your domestic league and earn a UEFA Champions League slot? Well, we can give you tens of millions of reasons. Liverpool FC’s exciting and surprising run to the final game of last year’s tournament earned them £72 million, better than any club in England and third most of any team in the entire tournament.
UEFA released their earnings figures on Thursday, where it outlined the guaranteed amount of money awarded to each club given the stage of the competition they reached. The European governing body also disclosed the monetary compensation amounts that were awarded as performance bonuses during the group stage and various progressions of the knockout rounds.
When all the incentives and base payouts were all totaled up, we ended with a table that looks like this:
2017-18 UEFA Champions League Revenue Top Five
Real Madrid £78.5 million
Roma £74.2 million
Liverpool £72 million
Juventus £70.9 million
Bayern Munich £62.4 million
Three more English clubs joined Liverpool in the top ten, with only Manchester United failing to crack the elite level. Chelsea was sixth at £57.7 million, Manchester City seventh at £56.5 million and Tottenham Hotspur ninth at £54.2 million.
French superpower Paris Saint-Germain came in eighth at £54.9 million while the Catalan club, Barcelona placed tenth with £50.8 million.
As was well documented, it was a historically successful UCL tourney on the pitch for British clubs last season, so naturally they performed very well on the fiscal ledger sheet as well. Manchester United who weren’t able to get past Sevilla in the round of 16, registered earnings of £35.3 million.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, is currently a regular contributor to SB Nation, WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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