Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Premier League rivals count the cost of Chelsea's Champions League triumph over Bayern Munich

Chelsea’s penalty shoot-out win against Bayern Munich last Saturday night will cost Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal tens of millions of pounds.

The Blues’ triumph will reduce the amount available to their Premier League rivals from the Champions League ‘market pool’. That is the guaranteed sum available to English clubs from Sky and ITV’s broadcast deals with Uefa.


Under the most recently applied formula, for the 2010-11 Champions League, European football’s governing body gave 32.2 per cent, or £27 million, of what went to English clubs to the then reigning domestic champions, Chelsea.

Then 30.9 per cent, or £25.9 million, went to the previous season’s second-placed side, Manchester United, another £16.6 million to Arsenal, who had come third domestically, and £14.4 million to Tottenham Hotspur for their prior year’s fourth place.

However, following Chelsea’s success against Bayern — which has forced Spurs out of next season’s Champions League tournament and into the Europa League — Uefa has devised a new formula for the ‘market-pool’ distributions. This would see Chelsea take 30 per cent of the spoils despite having finished sixth in the Premier League.

The share available to the champions, Manchester City, would consequently be reduced to 30 per cent, United’s would fall to 25 per cent and Arsenal’s to a mere 15 per cent. With Champions League payments to clubs set to double from next season, that would have a punitive effect on the other English clubs.

The difference in the two funding formulas could cost United as much as £9.8  million, Arsenal up to £8 million and Manchester City perhaps £3.7 million. But Chelsea would be the big beneficiaries. Had they finished fourth and gone in to the group stage through the qualifying rounds they would have earned up to £21.5  million less than under the revised formula.

A Uefa spokeswoman, who did not comment on the shift in the formula for next season when asked on Tuesday night, did say that any revisions to the calculations will have to be approved by its executive meeting in July.

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