25/26 season of UEFA Champions League (UCL) has begun with a bang. The first matchweek produced some scintillating games like Borussia Dortmund v Juventus which has managed to set the tone for the new season.
A reminder that UEFA Champions League is now played with 36 teams and under a new format, the much-discussed Swiss model. The new format was adopted from 24/25, partly to offset the looming Super League threat, and partly due to a much-needed reform. The new model does assure one thing for certain – a substantial increase in revenue thereby making the domestic leagues more competitive.
In its second year, the 25/26 edition comes with further changes, some from UEFA and some innovations by broadcasters. This season also witnesses participation from six English clubs, for the first time ever along with three new entrants Union Saint-Gilloise, Kazakh side Kairat Almaty and Cypriot side Pafos. Finals in Budapest. What’s more, for the first time a Champions League final is being hosted in Hungary!
This blog looks at all the key changes, innovations and gives an overview of the business side of 25/26 edition.
Changes Introduced
Although the core format of Champions League continues as introduced in 24/25, some changes brought by UEFA makes it more interesting.
- In case of a long-term injury to outfield players, clubs can admit the temporary replacement of just one player. The rule, applicable during the league phase, makes sure that squads are not unfairly reduced and as UEAF said, “it is also to safeguard players from additional workload pressure”.
- As is the format, each team will play 8 matches in the league round accumulating points based on wins and ranked in the decreasing order of points accumulated. Here’s where the change comes in. Now, teams that are ranked one to four after the league phase will play the second leg of the quarter-final stages at home. For the semi-final, teams ranked one and two will also play the second leg at home. If a seeded team is beaten in either round, the team that has eliminated them will take over the seeding position in the bracket path.
- One key change that UEFA brought in this season is the early kick-off time for final. For the first time, Champions League final will begin at 17:00 BST, a switch from the earlier 20:00 BST kick-off time. A big beneficiary to this change will be the audiences from Asia and a large section of the USA, who will be able to access it in a more convenient time period. This will help reach a broader range of audiences.
Innovation
Perhaps the most significant innovation is being brought by Amazon Prime Video in its Champions League coverage, a coverage as driven by data and replicating its learnings and experience from the NFL coverage.
Imagine this – a broadcast coverage which shows a lot more on the screen along with the live play, like player’s name, their running speed, the distance of a pass, even the passing options as part of the extra information, jump height, position of all 22 players on the pitch (displayed in a graphic at the bottom of the screen) and so on. The xG of each goalscoring opportunity will also be captured and displayed, putting a metric new to the game a decade ago at the heart of coverage. Amazon has built its own xG model and designed an algorithm that will calculate “momentum” in a match, another live stat.
This innovation, started by Amazon about three years ago, has won an Emmy for outstanding interactive experience in 2023. In what can be attributed to the success of this innovation, Amazon’s audiences grew by 11% in the following year and as reported in media, audience that grew was on an average seven years younger that the audience on linear broadcast.
Why is this important?
Business case points that, in the UK, Amazon has low share and such innovations help reiterate the fact that Amazon is a tech-player while bringing it closer to the younger audiences. For the viewers, simple, a superlative viewing experience.
Prize Money Payouts
The biggest upside to the revised Champions League (and other UEFA club competitions including Europa League and Conference League) is a significant increase in revenue. The distributed amount is increased from €2 billion to €2.5 billion. The base for whole distribution is divided into two parts, ‘prize money’ comprising of participation and performance ranking and ‘value pillar’, based on TV pool and UEFA coefficient.
In case of Champions League and Europa League, the distribution weightage of revenue by component is:
- Participation – 27.5%
- Performance – 37.5%
- Value pillar – 35%
In case of Conference League, the distribution weightage is:
- Participation – 40%
- Performance – 40%
- Value pillar – 20%
Since Champions League has a hefty amount of €2.5bn to distribute, as a result the participation fee share for each of the 36 participant club becomes €18.6bn, which is a very significant share of revenue especially in case of clubs outside of the ‘big five’ leagues. In case of Europa League, it is much lower at €4.3mn for each participant & €3.2mn for each Conference League participant.
New Entrants
The three new entrants to the Champions League roster in the 25/26 season are – Belgian Pro League team Union Saint-Gilloise, Kazakh side Kairat Almaty, Cypriot side Pafos.
Each of the clubs have made it to the Champions League for the first time ever, a very important achievement in the club’s history and a testament to their growth in recent years. In the last five years, Royale Union Saint- Gilloise has had a stupendous rise to the top of the domestic league table. They won the domestic league for the first time in 24/25 and currently leading the league in 25/26 with 7 matches played. It is anything but a coincidence that the club’s fortunes began turning post Brighton’s owner, Tony Bloom, acquiring a stake and a data-driven recruitment strategy followed.
Sponsor’s Battlefield
UEFA Champions League is the biggest club competition not only on-field but in the off-field business arena too. UEFA budgets approximately €4.5bn in revenue from the Club competitions in 25/26 out of which about 87% of revenue is expected to be generated from Champions League and Super Cup combined and commercial revenue share of that is projected to be about €674mn.
UEFA has three levels of sponsorship:
- Official Global Sponsors: Heineken. PlayStation, Lay’s, FedEx, Mastercard, crypto.com, bet365, Just Eat Takeaway, Qatar Airways
- Official Supplier Partner: Adidas
- Official Enhanced Partner: EA Sports FC, Topps, OPPO, JoyBuy
At the individual club level, kit sponsorship along with front-of-shirt and sleeve sponsorships are the biggest assets.
In the 25/26 UEFA Champions league, eight kit manufacturers share the 36 club representation with Adidas leading having partnered with 12 club teams followed by Nike with 8 club teams and Puma with 7. The three brands occupy 75% of the clubs while five manufacturers cover the balance 9 clubs.
In the combined front-of-shirt and sleeve segments, betting & gambling category brands lead the presence with 9 sponsorships (3 in sleeve and 6 in front-of-shirt) followed by financial category with 8 sponsorships, cryptocurrency and airlines categories with 7 sponsorships each.
In Conclusion
The biggest stage of club competitions begins. All indications so far point to a fairly well formulated new revamped format system of UEFA’s competition with clubs receiving their deserved share of revenue and fans, their share of excitement.
UEFA still has to work out a strong framework for multi-club ownership (MCO) driven club participation. As per CIES Sports Intelligence, in 25/26 season of Champions League, nearly half of the participating clubs are part of an MCO network, although clubs from a single network have been allowed. It is only a matter of time before that happens and stop-gap approaches (like divesting shares or putting in a blind trust) would work.
Meanwhile, let the fans enjoy and as the old emperor would say ‘let the games begin’!
