For all that this season marks a new epoch in the tale of booming UEFA prize money, cash will be far from the thoughts of Paris Saint-Germain on Saturday evening in Munich. Luis Enrique and his players sit on the cusp of the club’s first Champions League success, a prize both coveted and elusive since the French club were taken over by Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) almost 15 years ago.

Since that date, QSI has poured billions into transforming a team that, in an albeit truncated existence since they were formed in 1970, had only won the French league twice. Eleven more championships have followed in the subsequent 14 seasons, with PSG’s domestic ventures rarely even resembling a proper competition. A comparison of Ligue 1 wage bills, that great financial barometer of on-field performance, has long required two scales — one for PSG, another for the rest.

Money, then, is not at the forefront of the Paris club’s mind as they face Inter of Italy tonight. That is despite the fact a win at the Allianz Arena would see PSG take home a single-season record in UEFA prize money, eclipsing the previous mark of €138.8million (£116.4m/$157.2m) set by Real Madrid’s triumph in the same fixture last year.

PSG should clear €140million in earnings if they win it all, a figure which would have been higher had they fared better than 15th in the competition’s newly-introduced league phase, with four wins and a defeat in their eight matches. Inter did better, finishing fourth by winning six times and drawing once, which helped them make up ground lost due to Italian TV rights forming a smaller share of the Champions League pool. They should top €140m with a win this evening, too.

PSG hardly want for money, but it’s a different story among their domestic peers. Ligue 1’s already-reduced TV deal with DAZN has been cancelled just one season into a five-year term, and the trouble surrounding the matter reportedly led Jean-Marc Mickeler, the head of the DNCG, French football’s financial watchdog, to request that clubs budget for no domestic TV money at all next season.

Another report in leading French newspaper L’Equipe back in August laid bare the stark drop-off that awaited Ligue 1 clubs even with the DAZN deal in place. At the top end, it was estimated the league winners (inevitably that turned out to be PSG, again) would bank around €22million in prize money this season — roughly a third of 2023-24’s €60m. That €22m is less than €4m away from the €18.6m PSG and three other Ligue 1 clubs pocketed simply for reaching the league phase of the Champions League.

The reduction was similar in percentage terms at the other end, with this year’s bottom-placed side, Montpellier, expected to earn just €5million, again around a third of last season’s basement dwellers Clermont. Of course, while the percentage shift might be similar, the real impact on clubs lower down the league in France is likely to be much harsher, just as the improved Champions League bounty could have an outsized impact on the top ones.

This season, three other French clubs joined PSG in the Champions League, and each of Lille, Monaco and Brest have earned far more from Europe than they did domestically. In the case of Brest, their expected earnings from a first foray into European competition in club history are pegged at around the €50million mark; Brest’s total revenue in 2023-24 was just €64m.

In a positive sense, the money flowing from Brest’s unlikely arrival on the biggest stage can help elevate a club otherwise unlikely to compete for trophies all that often. Yet the stark disparity between what French sides can earn at home and abroad risks deepening divides within a league that already suffers badly from a lack of competition at its top end.

What of Saturday’s other finalists?

Inter will be looking to make up for narrowly missing out on a second consecutive Serie A title last weekend to Napoli. Financially, like their opponents this weekend, they’ll earn more from Europe this season than they did at home.

The difference, though, is nowhere near as vast. Inter received €101.1million in prize money for winning the Italian league in 2023-24, and while their earnings as runners-up this season are unclear (it will be less than their European income, given their progress to the Champions League final), the impact of UEFA funds on the overall finances of Serie A is less pronounced than it will now be over in France.

That is even more true of the other domestic leagues that make up Europe’s ‘Big Five’.

Based on UEFA’s most recent European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report, clubs in England’s Premier League relied on income from the continental competitions for just 6.7 per cent of their combined revenues in the 2022-23 season.

That was the third-lowest mark among UEFA’s 54 national associations; the only countries where European prize money made up a lower proportion of club revenues were Russia, whose teams remain barred from the three competitions following the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, and Romania, where figures were impacted by its clubs’ financial years running annually rather than across two football seasons.

In Spain and Germany, UEFA money comprised around 10 per cent of top-tier turnover, even as clubs in those countries received €386million and €335m respectively from the European governing body. Spanish and German sides, collectively, generate substantial revenue from other sources.

At the other end of the scale, per that same UEFA report, several national associations significantly rely on European income. In five of them, UEFA money comprised more than half of clubs’ annual turnover in the 2023 financial year.

Leading the way in that regard in both 2022 and 2023 was Gibraltar, where money from UEFA comprised over 70 per cent of total revenues in the top tier. Clubs from the tiny state at the southern tip of Western Europe generated just €8.2million across the two years, €6m of it coming via the continent’s football governing body.

The vast majority of that also accrued to one club. Lincoln Red Imps reached the Conference League group stage in 2021-22 and have continued to enjoy income from UEFA competition since. In the 2024 calendar year, they banked a further €2million even while not making it beyond this season’s Conference League qualifying phases. That’s great for them but ruinous for competitive balance at home; since the turn of the millennium, Lincoln have failed to win Gibraltar’s top league only twice.

That’s not a uniform occurrence but there are other examples of how prize money earned at European level can simply widen domestic gaps.

In Moldova, third on our list, Sheriff Tiraspol’s run in the Champions League in 2021-22 included a historic 2-1 away win against the competition’s eventual winners Madrid. For their efforts, the first side from the Moldovan league ever to reach the group stage earned €24.2million in prize money. By contrast, the total income in their domestic league in 2022 was just €16m (note that Sheriff’s European income was split across their 2021 and 2022 financial years, so doesn’t correspond to the single-season income from UEFA).

Sheriff’s journey to the Bernabeu began through them winning the Moldovan Super Liga a season earlier, their 19th domestic title in 21 seasons. That would swiftly become 21 in 23. Exploits abroad gave them an even greater financial advantage back home.

Strangely enough, though, Sheriff’s continental boon has since been followed by reduced domestic dominance. In both 2023-24 and 2024-25, they only managed a runners-up spot, so perhaps more money doesn’t always translate to ever-greater success.

For club accounts with a financial year ending in 2023, 15 national associations relied on UEFA for more than a quarter of team incomes in their respective top tiers. That was actually a reduction from 2022, when 22 national associations attributed more than 25 per cent of revenue to monies from UEFA.

Several of those associations might be termed minnows, reliant on money from afar or susceptible to the skewing effect of one of their sides progressing further than expected on the continent. Yet a constant among the nations relying on UEFA for a big chunk of club incomes is one few would consider a footballing backwater.

In both 2021-22 and 2022-23, teams in Portugal’s Primeira Liga earned 32 per cent of their collective revenues from Europe. In the latter season, €195million of the division’s €615m total revenue came from UEFA, with the majority of it accruing to a small slew of teams.

UEFA hasn’t released figures for financial years ending in 2024, but the general trend in Portugal will remain. Across 13 clubs (data for five more is currently unavailable), €161million of €587m total revenue was attributable to UEFA which, while a proportional reduction on 2023 (2024: 27 per cent), is still a high amount and, what’s more, accrues to a small slew of clubs.

Last season, that €161million in UEFA money went to just four teams: Porto, Benfica, Braga and Sporting CP. Other than Braga, those clubs already boasted significantly higher income than the rest of the division; prize money from Europe only widens an existing chasm. There is a reason only Porto, Benfica or Sporting are ever expected to win the title in Portugal, and their continued wealth from competing in Europe is part of it.

That is not to lay all the blame at UEFA’s door. In the 91-season history of Portugal’s top tier, only five clubs have ever been champions — and two of those have only won it once. Between them, Benfica, Porto and Sporting share 89 titles, a dominance that long pre-dates not only hefty European prize money but also the very concept of continental football in the first place.

There’s also the point that while European-level income might reduce competitive balance back home, it’s also in certain cases necessary to keep the standard of those UEFA tournaments at a sufficient level of quality. That’s certainly the case in Portugal where, without the monies from the Champions League — both prize money and the profits earned by selling players its clubs can showcase there — they’d have little chance of performing as well in Europe as they often tend to.

Further in favour of how wealth is dispensed on the continental stage, revenues from UEFA aren’t just limited to prize money from the governing body’s three club competitions. Solidarity payments to non-competing teams, numbering in the hundreds, are up to €260million and, particularly in leagues with low turnover, form an integral part of club budgets even as sides elsewhere on the continent earn many times more. Having said that, there has been recent lobbying for UEFA to share the wealth to an even greater extent, ostensibly to improve issues with competitive balance across the continent.

As PSG and Inter limber up to go for sporting glory tonight, the clubs’ respective bank balances have already benefited from this season’s run to the final. There’s nothing odd about that; prize money has long formed a part of the game, with the most successful teams earning the most money.

Doling out the fortunes that governing bodies receive from organising the sport — across the three main competitions and the pre-season Super Cup meeting of Champions League and Europa League winners, UEFA generated revenues of €3.724billion in the 2023-24 season — to clubs seems only right, though how best to do so is an ongoing debate that may only gain greater prominence as more and more money flows in.

Across Europe, money from UEFA both stresses domestic leagues and props them up. Whether it does so in a way that encourages a fair and competitive sport is another matter entirely.

(Top photo: PSG after winning Ligue 1… again; Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)