An article titled "How the Champions League Ate Football" was published on the prestigious The Athletic website, which is affiliated with the New York Times media group. Written by Philip Buckingham, it’s essentially a tribute to the most important club football competition in the world. Indeed, the Champions League is a story of unprecedented success. It began in 1992 with just eight teams in the group stage, and its first winner, AC Milan, earned £6.7 million from the competition. Now, as the new league-format season of 2024/25 kicks off on Tuesday, UEFA promises the champion £136 million - almost 23 times more. Over the last 20 years, commercial revenues for the Champions League have grown fivefold - from £114 million to £507 million. TV revenues soared from £410 million annually in the 2004/05 season to £3 billion in 2022/23. The Champions League anthem is recognized by football fans worldwide, as is the iconic star-studded logo.
Champions League: Everything Is Premium Here
"While the World Cup is still the biggest event in the world in terms of viewership, club competitions far surpass international ones in terms of engagement and commercial power" - Dan Haddad, head of commercial strategy at sports, music, and entertainment agency Octagon, said in The Athletic. "The Champions League has a cohesive visual and audio identity. Everything about it is premium and exceptional" - he added.
In the same article, Hugo Hensley, head of sports services at Brand Finance, a leading brand valuation and strategy firm, noted: "Only the World Cup is more watched than the Champions League. And it's not just Europe. We study markets in the United States, Brazil, China, India, and Australia. The Champions League is followed by 83 percent of football fans, which is amazing. The World Cup reaches 92 percent, which is extraordinary".
"Greed Is Good" - Declared Gekko
What The Athletic fails to consider, however, is the context behind the Champions League's success. The early 1990s, when the tournament began, were a time of great global political, economic, and mental revolution. Communism had just collapsed, the Soviet Union had disbanded, and China had opened up to the world. Globalization was in full swing. Bill Clinton was winning elections in the U.S. under the slogan "It's the economy, stupid," and in business circles, Gordon Gekko's famous phrase from the 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street, "Greed is good," was passed from mouth to mouth. Played by Michael Douglas, Gekko's character is perhaps the only movie villain who inspired tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, particularly brokers, bankers, and financiers.
UEFA rode this wave of globalization. Greed gripped the executives, club owners, and players. The economic boom of the Champions League was further boosted by the emergence of commercial pay-TV networks, which desperately needed premium content to sell to their subscribers. BSkyB launched in the UK in 1990, Canal+ in France in 1984, Leo Kirch’s Premiere in Germany in 1991, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset in Italy in 1987. These companies, not UEFA executives, were the real force behind the rise of the Champions League. They poured increasing amounts of money into European competitions and fueled the promotional machine. Thanks to them—and the fans who bought subscriptions - the Champions League experienced an unprecedented era of growth.
For the past 25 years, it hasn’t just been football revenues that have skyrocketed. Even in Major League Baseball, revenues jumped from $3.6 billion in 2001 to $11.3 billion in 2024. True, the growth rate isn’t as steep as that of the Champions League, but that’s largely because football, commercially and in the media, had been lagging for a long time. English football’s first TV contract was signed in 1983, while MLB secured theirs 20 years earlier. The Premier League’s first TV deal in 1992 was worth 22 times less than the NFL's existing contract at the time, which brought in $900 million per season.
Five Countries Devoured the Rest - and Wanted to Spit It Out
The Champions League was a revolution, and like any revolution, it changed the world beyond recognition. Football before 1992 was entirely different. The most coveted trophy in club football wasn’t reserved only for the biggest clubs in Western Europe. Teams from Eastern Europe (Crvena Zvezda Belgrade, Steaua Bucharest) and even the north (Celtic Glasgow) could compete for it. But that world is gone. Thanks to the power of their media companies, European competitions are now dominated by clubs from the five largest European TV markets. UEFA’s distribution of money ensures that broadcast revenue from England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany flows back to clubs from those countries, often with a surplus. And since those countries pay the most, their clubs continue to grow stronger each year.
In the last 25 years, only one club outside of England, France, Italy, Germany, or Spain has reached the Champions League final - FC Porto under coach José Mourinho, which won the competition in 2004. As for the semifinals, besides Porto, only Ajax Amsterdam (2019), PSV Eindhoven (2005), and Dynamo Kyiv (1999) have broken the dominance of the "Big Five" in the past quarter-century. That’s just four percent of all semifinalists during that time! It’s not the Champions League that devoured football; it’s the five major European countries that devoured the rest.
Not only did they devour it, but they also wanted to spit it out. The Super League project, still hanging over European football, sought to keep all the money for itself, without sharing it with smaller clubs. Political intervention from heads of state and UEFA stopped it in its tracks. The British Prime Minister and French President realized that the interests of global football giants would destroy local football businesses in their countries.
This is already happening, and UEFA is playing a part in it. They proudly boast that by increasing the number of participants in the Champions League, increasing the number of matches, and adding new Thursday fixtures, they will raise broadcast revenues to €4.4 billion annually across all competitions, up from €3.5 billion in the 2023/24 season. Meanwhile, many European leagues are seeing an unprecedented drop in revenues from media rights, including top leagues in Italy, Germany, and France. England has managed to hold on, but only by modifying its match calendar to make more games available to English viewers.
Who Benefits from the Champions League Reform?
Most British fans are convinced that the Champions League reform - introducing a league stage instead of traditional groups - is for the benefit of the biggest clubs. When UEFA first announced the changes in 2021, consumer research company Maru Group surveyed British and American fans to gauge their reactions. The differences were striking. The British believe the changes won’t make the competition more attractive (55 percent against 25), while Americans think the opposite, with 60 percent believing that 36 teams in one league will increase interest (60 to 31). The British believe the changes are bad for fans (36 to 28), while Americans think they are good (67 to 12). Both nations agree, however, that the changes were made to please the big clubs (52 to 12 in the UK and 63 to 11 in the U.S.). The British think the changes will harm football (38 to 29), while Americans think they will benefit the game (69 to 16)*.
Commenting on the research, media analyst Gavin Bridge wrote on his LinkedIn profile:
Fans from the UK are more likely to say the changes will be harmful to football, while American fans overwhelmingly support them. At first glance, such differences might seem strange, but consider that American fans are watching from afar, and the Champions League doesn’t affect their domestic competitions. So, for these fans, who are more attached to large, brand-name clubs looking to cement their place in the Champions League, these changes will make the competition more appealing. This move seems designed to make the Champions League as attractive as possible for global audiences, with little regard for local fans.
The Iron Grip of Europe on Football
The Champions League’s incredible success has concentrated wealth in a small circle, with dire consequences for the rest of the world. Clubs from Europe’s Big Five are siphoning money, players, and fans from other countries and continents. The New York Times wrote during the Qatar World Cup:
Every aspect of global football culture is now shaped by the demands of the market in Europe’s major leagues: England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France. This guiding hand decides which players get the chance to join academies and pursue fame. It dictates how they are trained when they arrive. It determines how they learn to play.
The spirit of professional football has been corrupted by turning the sport into an industry, resulting in a disciplined and technocratic game that turns players into robots. As Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano put it, such an approach to football 'forbids any fun'; in the interest of maximizing productivity and profits, it 'denies joy, kills fantasy, and prohibits audacity.' In the end, magic isn’t profitable
- Mexican journalist Belen Fernandez astutely observed on Al Jazeera.
The new Champions League format is just another version of a product designed to maximize revenue for the world’s richest clubs. The only question is whether fans - especially young ones - will be willing to buy it.
(*In the presented research, undecided participants are excluded.)
