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Market pool
While the fixed payments system is rather straightforward, the market pool breakdown is slightly more complicated. The market pool is essentially the value of a domestic league’s TV rights and markets. Thus, some leagues have larger pools than others.
The Barclays Premier League has the largest TV rights deal in European football, and consequently it has the largest market pool of any domestic league in Europe, at around €73.2m, which is divided amongst the four clubs that qualify for the Champions League. This figure is set to rise further with BT Sport’s three-year £900m deal (€1.2bn) for Champions League rights that kicks in from the 2015/16 season.
The important thing to understand here is that the market pool itself is split into two equal amounts. England, therefore, has two pools of €36.6m each. 50% of the market pool is divided based on league position in the previous season.
So for example, in Spain, England, and Germany (which have the three domestic leagues that get four CL spots by virtue of their UEFA coefficients), the breakdown is as follows – the champions get 40%, second place gets 30%, third place gets 20% and the fourth place gets 10%.
Remember, this is for the first half of the pool. Thus, in the 2014/15 season, the breakdown of the numbers for English clubs worked out to something like this:
- Manchester City (Champions 2013/14) – 40% of €36.6m = €14.64m
- Liverpool (2nd place 2013/14) – 30% of €36.6m = €10.98m
- Chelsea (3rd place 2013/14) – 20% of €36.6m = €7.32m
- Arsenal (4th place 2013/14) – 10% of 36.6m = €3.66m
This is only the first half of the market pool, and is rather simple to understand. The second half of the market pool is comprised of a split between the four clubs, based on the number of matches they have played as a percentage of the total matches played by clubs from that country.
Seeing how English clubs did rather horribly this season, with Liverpool failing to make it out of the group stages and the other three crashing out in the round of 16, the calculation becomes slightly easier.
Liverpool played a total of six games, while the other three played eight games each in total (six group stage + two games in the round of 16). This makes it a total of 30 matches for English teams.
Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City would all make around 26.67% each of the remaining €36.6m, with Liverpool taking the rest. Thus, Liverpool would get another €7.32m, with the other three clubs taking home around €9.76m each.
The way that this works creates a situation where it is more beneficial for a club if the other teams from its country do not do as well in the competition. For example, beaten finalists Juventus FC benefitted immensely from being the only Italian club in the knockout stages of the competition, with their final income being more than eventual champions FC Barcelona.
An analysis of the total money earned by the two finalists is shown below:
| Stage | FC Barcelona | Juventus FC |
| Group stage | €8.6 m | €8.6 m |
| Group stage performance bonus | €5m (5W,1L) | €3.5m (3W,1D,2L) |
| Round of 16 | €3.5 m | €3.5 m |
| Quarter-finals | €3.9 m | €3.9 m |
| Semi-finals | €4.9 m | €4.9m |
| Finals | €10.5 m (winners) | €6.5 m |
| Market pool (2013/14 League performance + number of matches played by other domestic clubs) | €21.5 m (approx.) | €32.15 m (approx.) |
| Total | €57.9m (approx.) | €63m (approx.) |
Trophies or fourth place?
As has been shown, the Champions League is an incredible source of revenue for clubs. In addition to the tangible financial benefits, there is the added bonus of being able to sign the best players. Top players want to play in the Champions League, due to the immense prestige of the competition.
Historically-large clubs that do not have CL qualification find it difficult to attract proven players of quality, as elite players would want the added guarantee of playing in club football’s premier competition. Alexis Sanchez turned down a slightly more lucrative contract at Liverpool to play in the Champions League with Arsenal, and the same can be said of Oscar and Willian choosing Chelsea over Tottenham Hotspur after being extensively scouted by Spurs.
Getting back to Arsène Wenger’s original comment about CL qualification being a trophy in itself, it’s worth noting that Arsenal’s CL campaign this season (which ended in a round of 16 knockout) netted them around €30m in prize money (€8.6m group stages + performance bonus €4.5m (4W, 1D) + €3.5m R16 + €13.4m market pool). This is before adding extra figures such as match-day revenue and sales related to match-days.
The 2013/14 FA Cup success netted Arsenal about £4.2m (€5.9m) before match-day revenue is added on, TV and prize money included. The prize money has remained the same, but a new four-year TV deal that started in the 2014/15 season has increased the FA’s equivalent of the available market pool. However, it’s unlikely that the total prize money (TV rights included) for the 2014/15 FA Cup triumph would touch even £10m (€13m).
The massive disparity in financial recompense given out by the two competitions provides an insight into Wenger’s line of thinking. Any manager as financially aware as Wenger would no doubt pick Champions League qualification over a trophy like the FA Cup or the League Cup.
The supporters of clubs might think differently, but for the executives in club boardrooms, there’s only one logical choice.
