🇪🇺 The Lucrative Reasons as to why the UEFA Champions League is Changing Next Season

We are about to enter a very fruitful period of global sporting events and I cannot wait. Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk was meant to kick off a very strong run of sport but an interesting sparring session in Fury’s camp has changed the schedule somewhat.

I always wonder the impact of a PPV boxing fight NOT happening.

The booking of the venue, the purse of the fighters on the undercard, the staff and security now that are not needed, the refunding of all the tickets, the broadcaster now not having an event to air.

The ripple effect is quite large.

Thankfully the bankrollers for this event in particular can stomach it!

Alas, something that will not get postponed is the most important football tournament in Europe.

Next week (Feb. 13th) the Champions League knockout stages returns with this years Round of 16.

From here the 16 remaining teams will play a series of knockout rounds across the next three months culminating in this years final which will take place at Wembley Stadium on June 1.

Next season however (August 2024), the Champions League will have three distinct changes:

1. Firstly, the tournament is expanding. There will be 36 teams next season instead of 32

2. Secondly, the format of the league is completely changing. Instead of the traditional group stages, all 36 teams will form a league. In this league each team will play 8 matches instead of the 6 they currently play in the current group stage format

3. Finally, there will be no drop off into the Europa League for those who don’t quite make it.

Teams placed 25th or below in the league table will be eliminated from the Champions League completely, a change from the current format where 4 teams still have a chance at European success.

Interesting developments happening in Europe. But why?

Well, simply put, there are two main reasons:

- Reason #1: Money

More teams means more games. Expanding the tournament from 32 to 36 teams means the number of games increases from 125 to 189!

More games means more broadcast revenue.

UEFA predict that the increase in games will see a 33% increase in the current revenue seen from broadcasters! That is a rise from €3.6bn per season currently to €4.8bn next.

A wild increase.

But not the most important reason…

- Reason #2: Allay the vultures

The league format of the Champions League is known as Swiss format and has been used in a few tournaments globally, rugby league most notably.

Typically, this format tends to favour the bigger teams as each team is put into 4 segmented pots. These pots determine the matches you play in the league group and typically the teams in Pot 1 tend to get an easy ride into latter stages of the tournament.

And with this, we have a key reason as to why these changes are happening so soon.

Let’s not forget, the breakaway European Super League had a lot of people in UEFA scrambling to ensure their premier European competition continues to reign supreme.

What clubs wanted is a lucrative tournament, which reduced the chances of elimination and kept the elite, elite.

With this tournament structure the chance of elimination is still there for the European elites but its statistically far less of a probability than the group stage system.

In addition the added revenues will be distributed back to the teams allowing each team to make even more money than they have been making previously.

UEFA hope this will force clubs to not have to veer towards a European Super League and keep the Champions League gravy train rolling for many years to come.

They might be onto something too.

€5bn per year is a crazy amount and all the teams have bought in.

I am going to leave you here with a brilliant video I saw last week.

Quiet as kept, Gary Neville is building a sizeable business empire with a lot of regeneration in the City of Manchester.

This video gives a great insight into the depths of his work, a very inspiring 20 minutes from the Champions League winner.

Salute to Gary and his team.

See you next week.