The Union of European Clubs (UEC), the lobby group for non-elite teams across the continent, has proposed a radical new model for distributing the almost £4billion bonanza generated by UEFA’s club competitions each season.

In a presentation to the European Leagues’ general assembly in Bulgarian capital of Sofia on Wednesday, a UEC delegation outlined its proposal to scrap the “value pillar” that hands tens of millions of euros to Europe’s biggest clubs simply for being big, and also to share the “starting fees” that participating clubs get for reaching the league phases of UEFA’s competitions with the rest of the clubs in their domestic leagues.

These changes would eliminate the need for the solidarity payments UEFA currently gives to non-participating clubs and dramatically reduce the revenue disparity that can cause imbalances in domestic leagues.

“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,” a UEC spokesperson told The Athletic.

“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.

“Do we allow increased polarisation and predictability to ruin the magic of football those who cherish our sport? Or is there a common-sense way to distribute UCC income that strengthens clubs, leagues, UEFA competitions and the entire pyramid?

“UEC and our member clubs feel there is another way, and if UEFA and its partners are bold enough to look past short-term interest and political pressure from Europe’s most powerful clubs, many of whom actively participated in the breakaway Super League debacle, there’s a serious discussion waiting to happen which holds the promise of benefitting of European football as a whole.”

Set up in the aftermath of the aforementioned debacle, the UEC represents more than 140 clubs from 25 countries, with current or recent Premier League sides Burnley, Luton Town and Norwich City being among the 20 English clubs in its membership. European Leagues (EL) is the umbrella group that lobbies on behalf of 35 national professional leagues across Europe, including the Bundesliga, English Football League, La Liga, Premier League and Serie A. It also has five associate members, including the League of Ireland and Wales’ Cymru Premier.

In its presentation to the EL meeting, the UEC analysed the current situation in nine countries — Azerbaijan, Belgium, Greece, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Ukraine — and explained that its proposals 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.

As things stand, the top clubs in Portugal earn 80 times more than the last-placed team, France’s Paris Saint-Germain earn 40 times more than the bottom club in Ligue 1 and the top-to-bottom ratios in Italy and Spain are 10 to one. Shakhtar Donetsk earns a remarkable 140 times more than the last-placed team in Ukraine.

The UEC argued that with Europe’s biggest clubs earning much more than their rivals from their larger stadiums and global commercial deals, the only levers that can be pulled to reduce the huge gaps in financial firepower are the central distributions clubs receive from their leagues and UEFA, with the latter making a huge difference in most European leagues. By reducing these gaps, the UEC believes there will be more jeopardy in domestic and European competitions, which will increase media and commercial interest in them, boosting all clubs.

To demonstrate the impact of its plan, the UEC has modelled what would happen to UCC receipts for each club in the nine leagues it has analysed. It said the big clubs would all see their UEFA cheques significantly decline, with most Champions League clubs receiving about half what they currently bank, while Europa League clubs would be flat and everyone else would see a significant bump.

Under the current distribution, the total revenue pot of €4.4bn (£3.8bn; $5.1bn) is split on a 75/25 basis, with the larger part reserved for the 108 clubs that reach the league phase of the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League. The smaller part is used to pay for the running costs of those competitions, plus the Women’s Champions League and UEFA Youth League, with 10 per cent of the total pot ring-fenced for solidarity payments. This figure has increased in the latest media-rights cycle that started in 2024.

That was also when UEFA, working in tandem with the top clubs, decided to combine the old coefficient and market-pool payments it made to clubs with strong recent records in Europe and those from larger countries, and rebrand them as “value pillar” payments. Of the €3.3billion (£2.9billion) that is shared between the 108 participating clubs, 27.5 per cent is shared equally in “starting fees”, 37.5 per cent goes out in performance-related payments and 35 per cent is reserved for value pillar payments, which disproportionately benefit the game’s aristocrats.

Furthermore, the prize money pool is split on a 74/17/9 basis between the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League — a distribution that makes competing in the Conference League something of a mixed blessing.

Under the UEC’s proposal, solidarity payments would be scrapped, boosting the prize money pot to €3.5bn, as would the value pillar. Instead, the starting fees would be boosted to 62.5 per cent of the pot, with performance-related payments — earned for winning games and progressing through the tournaments — coming from the remainder. The split between the three competitions would change to 50/30/20.

Participating clubs would keep all of their performance payments but their starting fees would be pooled on a national basis and then shared evenly with the all other professional clubs in their domestic pyramids.

These changes would result in large reductions in the amount of money the likes of Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and all the rest of the big clubs earn, but significant increases for the rest of their domestic rivals.

For example, based on last season’s numbers, PSG’s UCC-related revenue would have fallen from €149m to €78m, with similar falls for Barca, Inter, Real Madrid and others.

Does the new proposal stand a chance?

Analysis

Given the power that clubs such as PSG, Real Madrid and others wield in the game right now, the UEC must know that the chances of its proposal being accepted by UEFA are very remote. After all, the last 30 years of European football club history have witnessed the gradual but inexorable growth of a dozen or so big brands, all of whom have revenues that dwarf most of their domestic rivals — a trend that UEFA’s competitions have exacerbated.

But with so many domestic leagues now dominated by a team or handful of teams that have monopolised access to European club competitions, UEFA is aware of its own role in the erosion of competitive balance across the continent, as well as in its own tournaments.

So, while the UEC plan is likely to be far too radical for UEFA, or any of the major domestic leagues, to publicly support, they will welcome the debate.