What Yesterday’s Loss Means in Financial Terms for Real Madrid

No doubt, the UEFA Champions League is big money.  The final game in 2010 is set to be played on May 22^nd in Real Madrid’s prestigious Bernabeu Stadium.  Real Madrid and club president Florentino Perez had high hopes of playing in front of a raucous home crowd in the championship game.

In 2008, Sportbusiness.com noted that research commissioned by MasterCard showed the winner of the 2009 Champions League was set to make around €110.35million.  FC Barcelona’s championship run last year was one of the reasons it made the jump to second on Deloitte’s 2010 Football Money League “Rich List.”  MasterCard’s research went on to state that any team that advanced out of group play to the Round of 16, the stage we are currently in, made on average €38.45million.  These amounts are determined by:

• UEFA participation payment
• UEFA prize money
• Share of UEFA commercial revenues from the tournament
• Ticket sales
• Commercial and marketing revenues
• Increased squad value

Not including revenue generated from Real Madrid’s home match against Olympique Lyonnais yesterday and revenue for hosting the upcoming championship game in May, back of the envelope math reveals that Real Madrid’s 1-2 defeat on aggregate means they will miss out on around €70million in potential revenue had they been able to reach and win the final game.  That revenue loss is probably much more because of Real Madrid’s massive international following.

A win could have gone a long way in paying down the €327million in reported debt.  MBA Soccer wonders if Argentinean international Gonzalo Higuain realized as much when he hit the near post in the 25^th minute.  Had Higuain scored, that would have put Real Madrid up 2-0 in the game, 2-1 on aggregate, and a couple million euros in the bank.