With three games left and four points the gap to the top four, Liverpool may have left it too late for the Champions League.
Second in the Premier League’s form table thanks to six wins on the spin, Jurgen Klopp’s side have been able to, thanks to some surprising dropped points for both Newcastle United and Manchester United, keep themselves in the hunt to the end.
Three wins and nine points from their remaining matches may not guarantee a spot in the lucrative Champions League, with Newcastle or Man United needing to slip up. But hope springs eternal, and the fact that Liverpool are even seriously in the conversation this late in the season is quite remarkable given the struggles of this campaign.
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And even if the Reds do fall short, their efforts won’t have been completely in vain.
At the start of March, Liverpool sat in seventh, nine points behind Tottenham Hotspur in fourth spot. Spurs, despite their own tumult off the field, had somehow managed to find themselves bonafide top-four contenders.
A little over two months on and the Reds are in the box seat for fifth spot and the Europa League next season, even if they do miss out on the Champions League prize they crave, which has become an important part of their self-sustaining business model under Fenway Sports Group.
Tottenham, having found themselves in the position of having to fire the interim coach who was minding the shop after Antonio Conte was sacked, have fallen away in recent weeks at an alarming rate. The North London side now sit seventh, five points behind Liverpool having played a game more and being chased down for a Europa Conference League spot by an Aston Villa team that have been resurgent under the guidance of Unai Emery.
If it isn’t to be the Champions League, there is a narrative that can form that it would be best for the Reds to be out of the European equation altogether, and regroup, without the added distraction of Europa League games and the increased pressure on the calendar.
However, financially, the different directions that Liverpool and Spurs have taken in recent weeks has a significant financial impact. And for the likes of the Reds, whose ability to act in the transfer market is based upon the strength of the club’s balance sheet, mitigating the impact of missing out on the top four is important.
While a fifth-placed finish and the Europa League would not be worth nearly as much as fourth and the Champions League, it remains a beneficial endeavour for clubs.
To reach the Europa League group stage is worth £3.2m to competing clubs compared to the £13.7m for the Champions League and the £2.6m on offer for the Europa Conference League.
Qualification from the group stage delivers £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. However, those numbers are poles apart from the £2.4m for a group stage win in the Champions League and £800,000 on offer for a draw, not to mention the £8.4m that can be won through qualifying for the knockout stages.
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.
Success in the Europa League for clubs is shared from a total prize pot of just more than £400m, a figure dwarfed by the Champions League’s £1.8bn prize pot. The TV market pool that is spread among clubs also differs significantly, with around £121m split up against a figure of £261m in the Champions League.
However, a run to the latter stages of the Europa League can deliver revenues in excess of £20m for clubs, while the additional matchday income that would arrive is also significant. Liverpool make in the region of £3m per home game, with Anfield a sell out on almost every competitive occasion.
To take out the potential for as many as seven home fixtures would be impactful on matchday revenues, which for the 2021/22 financial year stood at £86m.
Then there is the difference between finishing fifth and finishing eighth in the Premier League, where a few short weeks ago the tables were turned when it came to the fortunes of Liverpool and Tottenham. Now, Spurs are holding on for seventh and look an outside bet to secure that spot when considering the form of Aston Villa.
If the Reds finish in fifth place they would receive, based upon the figures for last season’s central payments to Premier League clubs, a sum of around £32.9m when factoring in merit payments from both the domestic and international markets. In contrast, there is a £6.1m differential with clubs finishing eighth, who bag around £26.8m in merit payments from the League’s two markets, where the money is derived from the enormous broadcast deals the competition has in place globally.
That £6.1m, added to the potential to earn up to £20m in matchday revenue from the additional Europa League games, as well as the carrot of more than £20m for a run to the final means that, when also taking into account co-efficient payments from UEFA, where Liverpool feature in the top 10 on the list due to their 10-year performance in European competition, as well as getting a share of the TV market pool, more than £50m is potentially in play.
The drop in revenues compared to the £103m the Reds achieved from last year’s run to the Champions League final, not to mention the additional matchday income that arrived from it, is something the club would have to take on the chin for this campaign.
But the potential impact on the club’s finances can be mitigating in no small part by a strong finish to this season and a strong performance in the Europa League next season.
Having additional matches in European competition is also useful for squad rotation and for sharpness among large squads. It is also a tool that can help drive up the valuations of players on the fringes who the club may be looking at moving on in the future.
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