The latest breakdown of revenue by UEFA from last seasons European competitions show AC Milan made £26,721,694 from winning the Champions League yet Newcastle made only £303,758 from competing in the UEFA cup.
Prize money by the English teams in the Champions league was:
Chelsea £23,394,444,
Liverpool £21,744,696
Manchester United £21,282,373
Arsenal £13,008,610
Prize money in the UEFA Cup was:
Sevilla (winners) £4,219,587
Tottenham £2,917,724
The most startling statistic is that Levski Sofia made £3,755,587 from losing all 6 champions league group games, around £500,000 less than Sevilla got for winning the UEFA cup.
Newcastle’s European campaign last season amazingly started on 15th July 2006 in the Inter Toto Cup drawing 1-1 in the home leg with Lillestom Sportsklubb, equally amazingly 31,059 fanatical Geordie supporters turned up to watch and also equally amazingly Luque scored our only goal.
The campaign ended 12 matches later as we were knocked out by AZ Alkmaar (hardly Europes finest) on 15th March 2007. By this time only 28,452 had turned up for the home leg. Along the way we were crowned as Inter Toto Cup winners for going furthest in the tournament amongst the Inter Toto entries, so another trophy on the shelf !!
In case your memory is failing you, we also came up against the might of Ventspils, FC Levadia Tallinn and SV Zulte-Waregem. Though to be fair we did play against Fenerbache, Palermo and strangely our lowest crowd was against the well known Celta Vigo where only 25,079 fanatical Geordies turned up.
Given it is about £1 million a place in the Premiership should we be risking Premiership points by getting players injured and player tiredness after long journey’s abroad in mid week. You do have to query whether the UEFA Cup is worth the bother??
