Non-elite clubs lobby UEC proposes overhaul of UEFA prize money to curb ‘predictable’ Champions League

The Union of European Clubs (UEC) has set out a plan to radically reshape how UEFA distributes the near-£4bn generated annually by its men’s club competitions, in a direct challenge to a system that heavily rewards Europe’s biggest brands.The proposals, presented to the European Leagues general assembly in Sofia on March 11, would cut payments to top Champions League clubs and redirect a larger share of UEFA cash into domestic pyramids.A UEC spokesperson said: “Playing in Europe is a dream for thousands of football clubs but the concentration of money at the top of the game poses a serious risk of UEFA club competitions becoming stale and predictable, with the same clubs featuring in the later rounds, year after year.“With the sales process officially underway for (UEFA club competition) media rights from 2027 and beyond, now is the time for fresh thinking about what we do with the riches generated by the Champions League and other European competitions.”At the centre of the UEC pitch is removing the ‘value pillar’ introduced in UEFA’s current cycle, which blends market-pool and coefficient-style rewards and allocates a large share of distributions based on market size and historic performance.The lobby group also wants to pool the ‘starting fees’ paid to clubs that reach the league phase of the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Conference League, and then redistribute that money across all professional clubs in the participating teams’ domestic leagues.The stated aim is to reduce the revenue gap created by UEFA payments, which UEC argues can distort domestic competitiveness in smaller and mid-sized markets even when top clubs already enjoy larger matchday and commercial revenues.UEC told the leagues meeting it had modelled the impact across nine countries and said its framework would reduce the first-to-last revenue ratios in those leagues from an average of more than 40-to-one to 5.5-to-one.Under UEFA’s current approach, the overall pot is split broadly between distributions to the clubs that reach the league phase and a smaller portion that covers competition costs and solidarity payments, with the biggest clubs benefiting materially from the value pillar.UEC’s alternative would scrap solidarity payments and reallocate that share into the prize-money pot, remove the value pillar entirely, and increase the proportion of distributions paid as starting fees while leaving performance-related payments in place to preserve sporting incentives.It also proposes adjusting the split between the three men’s competitions to 50/30/20 from the existing structure, narrowing the gap between the Champions League and the Europa League and Conference League.The intervention lands as UEFA prepares for the next commercial cycle, with the 2027–2031 media-rights sales process approaching and competitive balance increasingly part of the political debate between leagues, clubs and governing bodies.