Paris Saint Germain are already on £59.79m, with Bayern München on £54.86m and Liverpool on £54.22m. That is before the knockout rounds have even had a say. The Champions League's new money model is front-loaded enough that the elite clubs are building toward nine-figure totals early.
The clubs already above £50m
Paris Saint Germain lead the early earnings table, and the gap between them and the rest is not huge in percentage terms but it is already sizeable in cash terms. Bayern München are past £54m, Liverpool are just behind them, and Real Madrid are also above £51m.
Those numbers line up with the wider point behind the revamped format. The value pillar and the starting fee mean clubs do not need to wait for a deep knockout run before the totals start to look serious. Every club that reaches the league phase begins with £16.2m, and the champions can add another £21.7m on top of the earlier payments.
Why the ceiling is so high
Football365's feature on the new structure put it bluntly: "The financial reward on offer in numerous competitions are preposterous and perhaps no more so than in the Champions League, in which clubs can earn well in excess of nine figures."
That ceiling is not theoretical. Winning every league phase game en route to lifting the trophy should bank a minimum £115.56m before TV and coefficient money is added. Football365 also identified Paris Saint Germain, Bayern München, Real Madrid and the Premier League's regular European qualifiers as the biggest winners from the value pillar.
The early read is clear enough: the new format is spreading money across the field, but the biggest clubs are still the ones pulling away fastest. If the league-phase pace holds, the names already above £50m will not stay there for long.
Written by Sam Whitfield with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →
