Sporting can secure over €48m next Sunday, thanks to... | OneFootball

Sporting are preparing to play the Portuguese Cup final against Torreense, but the Lions’ real multimillion-euro calculations are being played out… in England. More specifically in the Premier League, where Aston Villa could secure direct entry into the Champions League league phase for the Alvalade club.

If the English side finish fourth, the green-and-whites will avoid the qualifiers and go straight into the lucrative competition. And the financial differences are huge. To begin with, a club eliminated in the Champions League play-off receives only €4.29 million. By contrast, teams that enter directly into the league phase immediately start earning far higher amounts.

Just for being among the 36 participants in the league phase, Sporting could pocket €18.62 million. Added to that is the so-called “value pillar”, a mechanism that combines European ranking and the TV weight of national markets. Thanks to the Lions’ European standing, the club will collect around €29.76 million from this component.

All told, Sporting would start the Champions League with approximately €48.38 million guaranteed if they secure direct entry into the league phase. Then come the performance bonuses: each win is worth €2.1 million and each draw brings in €700,000.

On top of that, there is also a prize linked to the final league-phase standings. The system works through “shares”, with each position receiving an increasingly larger financial slice. The team finishing first can earn close to €9.9 million, while the top eight also receive an additional €2 million bonus.

UEFA then distributes increasingly larger sums as clubs progress in the competition: €11 million for the round of 16, €12.5 million for the quarter-finals, €15 million for the semi-finals and €18.5 million for reaching the final. The winner also receives an extra €6.5 million.

The 2025/26 European season clearly illustrates the scale of these figures for Sporting. The Lions earned around €80 million thanks to their participation in the Champions League: €18.62 million for entering the league phase, €16.2 million via the value pillar, €11.2 million for results, €8.25 million for seventh place in the table, €2 million for direct qualification to the round of 16, plus €11 million for the round of 16 and €12.5 million for reaching the quarter-finals.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.