The Europa League deserves a greater share of UEFA prize money, the chief executive of the organization representing the continent’s professional leagues said Thursday on a visit to Moscow.
Prize money in the Europa League is far lower than in the flagship Champions League competition. A club in the last 16 of the Europa League received 300,000 euros this season, compared to 3 million euros awarded to a Champions League club at the same stage.
“The gap in the size of payments received by Champions League clubs and the clubs in the Europa League, in our view, is too great,” Emmanuel Macedo de Medeiros, chief executive of the European Professional Football Leagues, told students at a Moscow university.
The organization had already notified UEFA of its views, he said, seeing the campaign as “an integral part of the policy of financial transparency, responsibility and solidarity, that the EPFL pursues."
UEFA paid too much attention to the views of Europe’s biggest clubs and not enough to the vast number of smaller teams, he suggested.
“Those sorts of clubs are in the majority, they have their history and their fans. ...The competitiveness of these clubs, including financially, increases interest in the game, as does the possibility of their further development.”
The EPFL represents 22 full member leagues, including the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A, the German Bundesliga and the Russian Premier League, with a further eight associate members, covering 23 countries.
