Champions League or Europa League – The differing sums of money you could earn and/or glory | OneFootball

After that disgraceful decision deep into added on time from Polish referee Szymon Marciniak at the Parc de Princes, Newcastle United’s Champions League fate is out of our hands.

Although I would suggest that our prospects of reaching the knockout stages still look reasonable.

It was important that we didn’t come into the Milan game with nothing to play for. There will be a raucous atmosphere at St James’ Park on 13 December and I can’t wait.

Avoid defeat and our European odyssey continues into the new year. With victory, our adventure could well be in the Champions League.

At the Signal Iduna on the same evening, I think Dortmund can avoid defeat against PSG, which if we beat Milan is all that’s needed for progression in the Champions League.

Dortmund are at home where they are yet to concede in the group, having beaten us and drawn with Milan. For those Newcastle United fans that attended our match in Dortmund, they’ll no doubt testify to how impressive the ‘Yellow Wall’ is and as we know full well, a boisterous home crowd can be very influential in helping determine the outcome.

If that’s too much of a leap of faith, okay, but putting such a fanciful notion to one side, the fact is that Dortmund will win the group if PSG don’t return to Paris with all three points, meaning that they will avoid the likes of Manchester City and Arsenal in the round of 16, as well as the Spanish trio of Barcelona, Real and Atleti. That seems like a pretty good incentive to me. In addition, despite their embarrassment of riches, PSG are really not that good.

Financial Fair Play isn’t ever far from our minds so when the lad tells me that we might be better off in the Europa League (he reckons we could go all the way to Dublin and win it) my retort is that the Champions League is where the money is at. When we drew with Leicester City in May and Champions League football was achieved for the first time in over twenty years, we all knew it was a one-way ticket to the UEFA gravy train and that we’d hit the financial jackpot.

The base payment from UEFA just for qualifying was €15.64m (£13.37m). With one win and two draws so far, we’ve obtained an additional €4.7m in prize money, €2.8m for that 4-1 win over PSG in September and €1.9m for the two draws – the shocking decision at the Parc de Princes effectively costing us €1.9m in prize money.

You can add to that a share of broadcast revenues as well as matchday takings from the three group matches played at SJP, plus another payment from UEFA to do with those weird coefficient things.

Broadcast revenues are worth €300m in total (representing 15% of the total purse) and made available to each national federation based on the proportional value of the TV market in its country. Each national federation distributes this money to the participating clubs with half of it based on fixed percentages determined by UEFA. The other half paid is out in proportion to the number of matches played in the competition. Estimating how much of this is due to Newcastle United is tricky, but to put this in context, Manchester City increased their broadcast revenues last season by over €50m, most of which they attributed to winning the Champions League.

Some 30% of the prize money (around €600m) is paid out to all 32 clubs in the group stage based on a coefficient algorithm that ranks their European performance over a 10-year period and distributes the money based on shares. This element of the purse isn’t particularly lucrative for us, but you’ve got to start somewhere I suppose. Given we are newbies to the gravy train, our ranking of the 32 clubs participating this season will be amongst the lowest and I think that will mean Newcastle United is unlikely to earn more than one share, worth just €1.1m. By contrast, those charlatans from Salford are ranked eleventh and that earns them €12.4m, with Real Madrid (the top-ranked team) earning 32 shares, which means they receive a whopping €36.4m.

So far so good, but finishing second in the group really opens up the riches on offer further. In addition to more of a share of broadcast revenues as well as takings from hosting at least one additional match in the round of 16, qualification from the group stage would see Newcastle United receive €9.6million in prize money.

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Progression to the quarter-finals would earn us an additional €10.6m and if you dare to dream about getting further, you’re talking €12.5m for a spot in the semi-finals. I’m feeling dizzy thinking about that, so will stop there, but if you’re really interested, reaching the final at Wembley is worth €15.5m and winning the big cup earns another €4.5m.

If we come up short against Milan or PSG win in Dortmund and we eventually finish third, the prize money is paltry in comparison.

Entering the Europa League will earn Newcastle United an initial €0.5m. UEFA’s second-tier tournament shares its revenue in the same way as the Champions League, so that includes prize money, broadcast income and coefficient payments. Advancing to the round of 16 is worth €1.2m, to the quarter-finals it is €1.8m, to the semi-finals it is €2.8m, and if we reached the final, we would earn a further €4.6m. The eventual winners receive a bonus payment of €4.0m.

The lad fancies our chances of going all the way to Dublin and winning it. I keep reminding him that there’s some good teams in the Europa League. The likes of Liverpool, Villarreal, Atalanta, Roma and Leverkusen have already qualified and the conclusion of the Champions League group stage could see one of Porto or Shakhtar dropping in. You can add Feyenoord and potentially Sevilla and Benfica to that list.

When he says he fancies our chances, that brings us back to the debate we had ahead of last season’s League Cup Final – what’s more important, winning a trophy or qualifying for the Champions League? HTL.