UEFA Champions League

Region: Europe
Teams: 32
Founded: 1955

Europe’s elite club competition, the UEFA Champions League attracts some of the biggest TV audiences in the world of sport. It is not unusual for well over 200 million viewers, in as many as 70 nations, to tune in to a single match contested by the strongest football clubs in Europe.

The Champions League is an important source of revenue for competing clubs. Simply qualifying for the tournament ensures a payout of €2 million, while the teams progressing to the final can pocket over three times this amount.

UEFA Champions League Format
An annual competition, the Champions League is conducted under the auspices of UEFA and comprises three distinct phases:

• Three knock-out qualifying rounds contested in mid-July by 76 football clubs. The 16 surviving teams join 16 teams that have qualified automatically by virtue of the fact they are either the current domestic league champions or have finished in the second to fourth places in the national championships.
• The tournament proper begins when 32 teams progress to the Group stage where they are divided into 8 groups of four teams each. Group winners, plus the runners-up, progress to the business end of the competition, the knock-out phase.
• The knock-out phase is contested by 16 teams, with the grand finale normally taking place in late May.

Local football associations that have performed well in the past five UEFA Champions Leagues, as well as during the UEFA Europa League season, are allowed bigger team representation with the designated clubs having to compete in fewer mandatory qualifying rounds. For instance the top three associations in the UEFA rankings are allocated 4 berths, while those ranked 4-6 are allocated 3 Champions League places.