The Celtic players face a tense evening in Sweden
Celtic: How much is Champions League play-off worth?
Celtic are in Sweden to play Malmo with a place in the group stages of the Champions League at stake. The Scottish champions take a 3-2 lead from the first leg of their play-off tie.
The players' overwhelming focus will be on their performance and winning the tie, but any player at this stage of the competition will be aware of the financial benefits for his club if the team can reach the lucrative group stages.
How much is success in Malmo worth to Celtic?
This is the first year of a new Uefa cycle, so the financial rewards are greater than before.
Teams getting through the final qualifier receive £1.42m. If they lose they get more, some £2.13m. More for losing? The winners benefit, hugely, in other ways…
From the group stage onwards the prize money is as follows:
Champions League prize money
|
|
|---|---|
|
Group stage fee |
£8.52m |
|
Group stage performance |
£1.06m per win, £355,000 per draw |
|
Round of 16 |
£3.9m |
|
Quarter-finals |
£4.26m |
|
Semi-finals |
£4.97m |
|
Final |
£10.65m for the winner, £7.45m for the runner-up |
By way of comparison, Celtic earned £2.7m for winning the Scottish Premiership title last season.
In other words, prize money for the winning the Scottish title over 38 matches is about the same as two wins and a draw in the Champions League group stage.
If Celtic progress and do not collect any points in the group stage, they would still receive £9.94m in prize money (£1.42m + £8.52m).
And there's more.
Clubs also earn money from the competition's market pool, which includes a share of TV money and represents 40% of total Champions League revenue. The figures cannot be accurately predicted, but using Celtic's most recent group stage campaign as a guide, in 2013-14 they received £5.79m.
Celtic played in the Europa League last season after failing to reach the Champions League
One of the factors involved in the final amount is performance in that year's competition and on that occasion Celtic won only one game.
Celtic can count on a large home support for Champions League matches. Two seasons ago, the sale of 255,000 match tickets across the qualifiers and group stage games against AC Milan, Ajax and Barcelona generated more than £6.4m.
So, the bottom line is that a win over Malmo is likely to be worth in excess of £21m to Celtic (9.94m in prize money + £5.79m market pool cash + £6m ticket sales = £21.73m).
And should Celtic lose?
If Malmo go through, then Celtic would pocket that £2.13m mentioned earlier and drop into the group stage of the Europa League, Uefa's less lucrative club tournament.
Below is a breakdown of the prize money on offer:
Europa League prize money
|
|
|---|---|
|
Group stage fee |
£1.74m |
|
Group stage performance |
£262,000 per win, £87,000 per draw |
|
Group winners |
£363,000, and £182,000 for runners-up |
|
Round of 32 |
£363,000 |
|
Round of 16 |
£545,000 |
|
Quarter-finals |
£727,000 |
|
Semi-finals |
£1.09m |
|
Final |
£4.72m for winner and £2.54m for runner-up |
So, even if Celtic did not gain a point in the Europa League they would be guaranteed £3.87m (£2.13m + £1.74m).
Again, market pool revenue is tricky to predict as last season's figures are not yet available – and the same is true of the gate money taken by Celtic during the Europa League campaign last year.
Both figures would be markedly less than their Champions League equivalents but using a bit of educated guesswork, their combined value might be about £4m.
So, if Celtic enter the Europa League group stage but don't progress it would be worth about £8m, plus any prize money for wins and draws.
Therefore, a rough comparison between qualification for the Champions League and the Europa League is £21m against £8m. The stakes are high.