Liverpool now know that they will be playing Europa League football next season after Manchester United clinched the fourth and final Champions League spot on Thursday evening with a win at home to Chelsea.
After a campaign that finished well but for long periods was mired in struggle for the Reds, a fifth-placed finish and a place in European football’s second-tier competition lies ahead for the 2023/24 campaign.
The aim this summer is for a rebuild to address the deficiencies in the squad that resulted in a campaign of disappointment, but in order to reach the Champions League for 2024/25 and return to generating the lucrative sums that come with participation, which can reach beyond the £100m mark, Liverpool will have to conduct their business against the backdrop of a drop in a crucial revenue stream.
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To reach the Champions League group stage, even before a ball is kicked, is worth around £13.7m to competing clubs, compared to the £3.2m for the Europa League and the £2.6m on offer for the Europa Conference League.
Group stage wins are worth an additional £2.4m, with draws earning clubs around £800,000. Qualification from the group stage in the Champions League brings in around £8.4m compared to £1m for the Europa League and £520,000 for the Europa Conference League. Around £570,000 is on offer to clubs for winning Europa League group stage games, with a figure in the region of £190,000 for a draw.
Before taking into consideration the slice of the TV market pool that clubs share in when competing and other commercial considerations, and the prize money on offer for winning individual group games, Champions League winners will take home around £73.3m in prize money for featuring in every round, compared to £19.8m in the Europa League and £12.7m in the Europa Conference League.
In terms of the merit payments from domestic and international media rights, fifth is worth £32.9m and fourth is around £35m.
For Liverpool, a fifth-placed finish and a run to the Europa League final could be worth more than £50m when factoring in best-case scenarios and including matchday revenues that would arrive for each home game. It is a figure that would be boosted by the Reds' healthy UEFA 10-year coefficient, where they sit 10th.
Liverpool will likely be the highest-rated team coefficient, meaning that they could receive as much as £3.7m of the TV market pool. Starting fees for the Europa League are around £3.2m for clubs in the group stage.
Getting £20m-plus in additional revenue from making the Europa League next season may not seem particularly game-changing when placed against what the club earned in recent years from the Champions League, but that is a figure that would help limit some of the impact of the wage bill or likely increase in amortisation costs on the balance sheet by the time that the next financial year is published.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, having some kind of European football to offer to prospective signings is important, even if it isn’t the Champions League.
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