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Champions League qualification: How much is it worth?

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Member
Feb 23, 2007
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I’ve been wondering for a while how much Champions League football is worth. Wednesday’s victory over Twente earned Spurs a £656,000 win bonus from UEFA on top of the £470,000 we got for just turning up.

Last May newspaper headlines were in bidding turmoil about how much Spurs Champions League qualification was worth. The Daily Mail led with “Tottenham seal £30m Champions League place”, the BBC suggested £40m, The Daily Mail countered again with “Crouch's £50m Winner” and the Mirror took the prize with “Spurs hit the £60million Champions League jackpot”. Even some of the Spurs Community forum posts during the summer suggested we should have been more active in the transfer market because we get “an extra 50 mill for CL group stage”.

After a bit of digging around my estimate of Champions League income is £16.5m, even if we go out in the group stage and lost every match. This is made up of £5.8m from playing and £10.7m from TV money.

The further we get the more money we make. The TV money is unlikely to change too much, however well we do.

If we were to get the last sixteen (£2.5m extra prize money) and win three games and draw one in the group stage (£2.3m) our total income from the competition would increase to £21.3m.

Spurs income in the last Deloitte rich list was £132m. So Champions League football could provide us with a 16 per cent increase in revenue. Gate receipts and merchandise sales will also swell clubs' coffers, though they may not be too different from revenue we might have received in the Europa League. Spurs can also cash in with more sponsorship opportunities, how much more was the Investec deal worth because we had Champions League football?

The rest of the column below provides details of the UEFA regulations and prize money. It is dull but it will enable an update as the competition progresses.

The prize money element is very clear in the UEFA regulation.

Each team in the group stage gets £5.83m (7.1,m Euros, UEFA gives all figures in Euros; 3.8m Euros for reaching the group stage and €550k per match, x6 matches = 3.3m Euros). There are also performance bonuses - £656,000 for a win and £328,000 for a draw.

Then we get to the knockouts, where the bigger money is up for grabs.

Playing in Round of 16: £2.46m
Playing in Quarters: £2.71m
Playing in Semis: £3.28m
Playing in Final: £4.27m
Champions League winners: £7.39m (plus the cup with big ears)

Last year Inter received £40.2m in prize (£23.8m) and TV money (£16.2m) for winning. Due to advantageous English TV money earnings Man Utd (who went out in the quarter finals) received £37.4m, this was more than Bayern (£36.1m) who lost in the final.

TV money (called the TV market pool by UEFA) comprises about 45% of the total UEFA money shared out amongst the 32 qualifying teams. It is distributed to each country according to the value of the national TV market. The UK is large and gets about 21% of the pot.

Last year the four English teams shared £79.11m of TV money. TV money is distributed in two parts.

Half the TV money (value £39.55m) is distributed according to the previous year’s league position (winners 40%, 2nd 30%, 3rd 15%, 4th 15%). Thus Spurs share of this is fixed at 15% or £5.93m.

The other half (value £39.55m) will be distributed according to the number of games Spurs play as a proportion of all the games played by English teams in the competition (i.e. total games played in the 2010/11 competition by Spurs, Man U, Chelski and the Scum). I’ve done the sums; the worst case scenario is that even if we go out in the group stage and two English teams are finalists and the other team lose in the semis we would still get 12 per cent of this pot – £4.75m. Perhaps a more realistic scenario is Spurs getting to the round of 16, two English teams in the semis and one in the quarter – this would give us 16.6% of the pot and income of £6.59m.

The TV market pool for 2010/11 is unclear, I have therefore used last year’s figures. UEFA media revenue for the competition is reported to have increased from 820m Euros a year in 2006-2009 to 1,100m in 2010, but I could not find a source that documents definitively how much of this is in the TV market pool in 2010/11.

The main lesson from all this is don't believe everything you read in the newspapers.
 

will8587

Well-Known Member
Jul 17, 2006
1,342
419
I applaud your thoroughness, but one unaccountable intangible comes to mind in assessing how much the Champions League is worth: we never would have been able to get Rafael van der Vaart if we hadn't qualified for the CL. The reason he said it was so easy to move from Madrid to Spurs was because he'd have a chance to play regularly. He could have gone to Bolton too, but he chose Spurs because they provided him with an opportunity to keep playing in Europe's most important competition.
It's that established, top quality player, not the up-and-coming ones like Modric, Berbatov or Bale that we've built our club on over the past 5 years, that we've been unable to attain. Even if we don't advance very far in the CL this year or even qualify again next year, the fact that we've crossed that threshold clearly elevates us to a higher level. It might not be monetary, but there's absolutely some sort of "worth" to it.

Who knows, what if we do make it out of the group stage and sign that heralded, world-class striker (HWCS) in January. And HWCS single-handedly wins a game or two for us (like VDV did yesterday), which in turn causes us to finish 4th again. But I digress...

Your point is a good one, the newspapers are essentially founded on hyperbole, but I believe there is also much greater value that can be derived from the Champions League than the financial figures indicate.
 

Bill_Oddie

Everything in Moderation
Staff
Feb 1, 2005
19,120
6,003
Brilliant work. Thank you very much.

I agree with will about the 'added value' element but the figures are interesting and I'm sure lots of posters will appreciate this. Especially as we didn't have to do all the work. :wink:
 

spud

Well-Known Member
Sep 2, 2003
5,850
8,794
Brilliant work. Thank you very much.

I agree with will about the 'added value' element but the figures are interesting and I'm sure lots of posters will appreciate this. Especially as we didn't have to do all the work. :wink:

This one does. Thanks for the article: repped.
 

Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
Cheers PDF. Match day revenue should work out about £6m just for the group stages, possibly higher (my sums, so could be way out). Merchandising would probably be impossible to work out until we see the end of year financial results compared to last years. You also have the extra Prem games that would be shown on TV as a result of us being in the CL group (I'm sure we will have more games aired than last season) especially as interest from abroad would have increased.
Also remember if we do get knocked out we will be dropped into the Europa league, giving us an extra few quid.

What I would like to know though is when do we get the money? Could we see a big name signing in Jan?
 

mawspurs

Staff
Jun 29, 2003
35,066
17,738
Great work pdf. Thanks for making the effort required to put that together.

One thing is for certain the money is far more than we have seen coming into the club in previous seasons. If we can become a regular in the CL then Levy will probably allow some leeway in wages which will also help to attract top players along with competing in the CL itself.
 

wakefieldyid

SC Supporter
Jun 13, 2006
1,560
1,591
Thanks for a valuable and well-researched analysis on the true value of our CL compaign.

I guess that the big unknown is how much of this will flow to the players in bonuses.

Spurs are well respected for keeping a tight lid on players' wages, so the most obvious way for them to deal with the additional income from the CL will be to ensure that a substantial proportion goes straight to the players as a performance-related bonus. (That way, we can still offer some encouragement to our players to stay loyal, without becoming dependent on CL qualification next year.)
 

Tone

Member
Aug 19, 2003
725
0
Nice work.

What the hard facts also don't take into account is the marketing worth. How much money will be generated over the coming year or so from increased exposure WORLDWIDE?

Being in the champs league could also sway a few of the younger kids who are deciding which team they wish to support in the future. Look at what success did for the fanbases of Liverpool in the 80s and Man Utd in the 90s? This kind of revenure generation is very difficult to put a figure on. With the Champions League being so popular and 'prestigious' in Europe and around the world, the exposure the club is getting could bring in a few more lifelong fans or merchandising sales.

I suppose being in the Champions League can be seen as 'cool' (especially if we get a decent result against Inter) and I can see a few more people in Thailand and other countries going around in Spurs shirts!
 

Jenko

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2004
5,290
4,157
I agree with this post. It's a well thought out article so fair play, and thanks.

One other intangiable asset (possibly) is the increase in value some of our players wll have now once they impress in CL games. Good performances earn worldwide recognition of a higher level than just doing well in the league. Gareth Bale's value will jump even higher if he rips Inter milan a new one in a couple of weeks. We have a few players like that who might become established names if they take they're chance (not that I want to sell them or anything).
 

JimmyG2

SC Supporter
Dec 7, 2006
15,014
20,779
Another factor is not only who Cl might allow us to attract, Van de Vaart for example, and who knows in the January window, but those it has allowed us to keep, Bale, Modric, Lennon( off form at the moment I know).
I think these are amongst the many intangible and unquantifiable bonuses of CL.

Sterling work sir.
 

Jenko

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2004
5,290
4,157
What I would like to know though is when do we get the money? Could we see a big name signing in Jan?

I really think our squad is too big now and we will probably try to sell off 3/4 players and only try to bring in 1 striker. I would imagine Levy is eager to reduce the wage bill in this way too. People I talk to are just absolutely staggered by the amount of good quality players we have, without us ever being in the CL before. We have much more than liverpool or the arseholes and our squad really does rival ManU's and Chelsea. How do we do it? I'm staggered myself by it sometimes, hats off to DL.
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
18,106
45,030
Thanks for this, it's useful info to have available on the site.

The journo-headline figures differ partly because they always include, to achieve maximum journo-bang, estimated consequential income such as additional merchandising and additional gate receipts.

The appearance, victory and television money is impressive enough, but the £30m-£50m press figures are always based on speculation - some of it perhaps even realistic - about merchandising and gate receipts.
 

guate

Well-Known Member
May 12, 2005
3,270
1,486
pdf, many thanks for your findings as they really do give us a better perspective of what the Champions League represents for us, monetary wise.
All the other comments regarding the intangibles (player value, apparel sales etc) also make good common sense and hopefully will go a long way in bringing more revenue into the club's coffers, thereby motivating our chairman and directors to move ahead with "Project Tottenham" Europe's top club by 2015
 

EmperorKabir

SC's Resident Legend
Dec 8, 2004
5,278
846
....what about the bucketloads of indirect income? pricier advertising, shirt sales, tv income from perhaps foreign tv (not as sure about that one), new fans, video game licensing, attendance increases (doesn't apply so much to us), other stuff I'm not thinking of.

Indirect income may well overshadow tv and uefa.
 
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