Chelsea Earn Most Prize Money During Women’s Champions League Group Stage

English champions, Chelsea Women are set to earn the largest amount in prize money after emerging from the group stage of the UEFA Women’s Champions League with the best record of any of the sixteen teams taking part.

After surprisingly being eliminated at this stage of the competition last year, the west London side topped a four-team group ahead of the previous season’s semi-finalists, Paris Saint-Germain, and quarter-finalists, Real Madrid, with a record of five wins and a draw from their six games.

When the European governing body, UEFA, announced the introduction of a first-ever group stage in their showpiece women’s club competition last year, they ensured each of the sixteen qualifying teams would earn a minimum of €400,000 ($424,700) prize money generated by a new centralized television deal with DAZN Group and a set of new sponsors specific to the competition.

Furthermore, the new deal awards prize money to each team based on results, Chelsea will eventually earn an additional €50,000 ($53,090) for each group-stage win and €17,000 ($18,049) for their draw in Madrid, amounting to an additional €270,000 ($286,658).

As one of the four group winners, Chelsea, along with Arsenal, Barcelona and Wolfsburg will be given a bonus payment of €20,000 ($21,235) and each team reaching the last eight are guaranteed to receive €160,000 ($169,884) even if they are eliminated at that stage in March. In total, Chelsea have so far earned €847,000, just under $900,000, in prize money so far.

Last season, Spanish champions Barcelona and French champions, Paris Saint-Germain earned the maximum amount of prize money available from the group phase of €880,000 ($934,295) by winning all of their six matches, something no team managed in this campaign. Barcelona and Bayern Munich qualified from the same group with five wins each, guaranteeing them prize money of €830,000 ($881,119) and €810,000 ($859,887) respectively.

The other Barclays Women’s Super League side, Arsenal, also qualified for the quarter-finals as group winners with four wins, one draw and one inconsequential defeat, earning them €797,000 ($846,065).

Chelsea went into last night’s match at home to Paris Saint-Germain having already secured their progress into the quarter-finals. Their 3-0 win earned them an additional €70,000 ($74,309) in prize money as group winners and, perhaps more importantly, ensured they will have home advantage for the decisive second leg of their quarter-final tie in March.

Chelsea moved last night’s match to the club’s main stadium of Stamford Bridge, attracting a crowd of 10,129, the second largest home attendance for an English club in the competition. Barcelona also played two of their matches at their Camp Nou stadium drawing the largest crowds of the group phase of 46,967 and 28,270 respectively. The additional gate receipts generated by both clubs are likely to push the team’s earnings from this season’s competition through the $1 million mark.

While the guaranteed revenue for women’s team competing in the UEFA Women’s Champions League is welcome in a competition where no prize money whatsoever was awarded to the first winners in 2002, there is a concern that wealth could increasingly be concentrated in certain nations. For the second season in succession, the eight quarter-finalsists will hail exclusively from the same five counties – England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – a repetition unprecedented in the 21 previous years of the tournament.

While UEFA hopes to alleviate these discrepancies by holding back almost a quarter of the competition’s revenue to award to top flight clubs not taking part, so-called ‘solidarity payments’, these amounts are also weighted towards the more successful leagues. The amount distributed to each national association is based on the performance of their clubs in the competition and must be shared equally among the clubs in their top domestic league not competing in the competition.

In the quarter-final draw on January 20, each of the four group winners, Arsenal, Barcelona, Chelsea and Wolfsburg will be paired with one of the group runners-up, Bayern Munich, Lyon, Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon, with the only stipulation being a club cannot be drawn against the team they already played in the group phase.

The winners of the competition could potentially earn prize money totalling €1.4 million ($1.486 million) from a prize pot of €24 million ($25.5 million).