Liverpool will earn €15.25m – or around £13.8m at current exchange rates – just by competing in the Champions League group stages.
The Reds will face Napoli, RB Salzburg and Racing Genk in Group E after the draw was completed in Monaco this evening.
This flat fee is on offer to clubs by UEFA as prize money simply for taking part in the group stage, regardless of how they get on in the six games played between September and December.
Each win in the group stage is worth an additional €2.7m to Liverpool , meaning a perfect record in the group stage could net a little under €31.5m in total.
A draw brings €0.9m to each side, with further cash on offer through a complex payment system based on the number of games won by teams.
In essence, the €1.8m paid out in total by UEFA for a draw is €0.9m shy of the money awarded for a win – so UEFA tallies up all the outstanding €0.9m resulting from draws across ALL groups, adds it all together, divides it by the number of wins across ALL groups and then hands out ‘shares’ to sides based on their number of wins.
Should clubs qualify for the knock-out stages of the competition by finishing either first or second in the group, UEFA awards increasing prize money based on the stage reached.
The round of 16 pays out €9.5m; the quarter final another €10.5m; the semi-final a further €12m; and the final €15m.
The team lifting the cup, as Liverpool did in Madrid back in June , is awarded €19m, plus the opportunity to compete in the 2019/20 UEFA Super Cup, featuring the winners of the Champions League and the Europa League.
Here, another €8m prize pot is shared: €4.5m to the winner and €3.5m to the runner-up.
These vast sums, demonstrating just how integral Champions League competition is to Premier League sides, are handed out per the latest three-year agreement by UEFA that commenced last season and runs until 2020/21.
Alongside prize money, UEFA also awards money based on a coefficient ranking system and TV pool.
Teams with historical precedent in Europe alongside more recent success – the measure being over the last ten seasons - benefit heavily from the coefficient ranking.
As winners of the Champions League earlier this year, Liverpool are set to collect close to €110m – or around £100million from UEFA’s revenue streams.
