Analysis

Manchester City in Europe: £227.7m for going through, and the clubs on the other side

Part 2. A count from UEFA's own payments, not a measure of what other clubs lost. UEFA paid Manchester City £227.7m (€264.7m) for going through rounds of its competitions from 2010/11 to 2025/26. What the next round was worth in the sixteen knockout ties City won, why Sevilla twice did better in the Europa League than a Champions League round of 16 would have paid, what followed from the 2023 treble, and why none of it is added to part 1. The commission's finding is under appeal.

By Arthur van de Laak13 October 2026Updated 25 October 2026 · View updates11 min read

13 October 2026.

Part 2. What UEFA paid City for each round, what the next round was worth to the clubs City beat, and why moving up is not always a gain.

Part 1 took Manchester City’s row out of every Premier League table and followed the money to the rest of English football. This part follows City into Europe.

On 29 September 2026 the Premier League announced that an independent commission had found Manchester City in breach of the League’s financial rules across nine seasons, 2009/10 to 2017/18. City have appealed, and sanctions have not been decided.

European football pays by the round. Reach the round of 16 and UEFA pays a fixed sum; reach the quarter-finals and it pays another. So there is a simple record to start from: what UEFA paid Manchester City for going through.

£227.7m at the time (€264.7m). Carried forward at 5% a year, a rate we chose for illustration and not one any court has set, it is £289.5m.

Three things this figure is not:

• It is not what other clubs lost. It is what one club was paid. Under the same format and the same payment rules those places and payments would have been there for other clubs, but which clubs, and how much each, cannot be known without playing the competitions again.
• It is not City’s European income. It counts only the payments for going through a round and, from 2024/25, for league-phase ranking. The fee for taking part, the bonuses for wins and draws, the television market pool and the coefficient money are left out of this measure. Part 1 separately counts what UEFA paid for whole European campaigns.
• It is not to be added to part 1. Both parts describe the same removal from two sides. More on that below.

1. What City was paid, season by season

There is no line for 2012/13: City finished fourth in their group that season and received none of these payments.

£36.5m of it falls in the seasons of the commission’s finding, and £191.2m in the seasons after. Each season’s figure is reconciled to the components of City’s line in UEFA’s published table of payments, where one exists. Four early lines (2010/11, 2011/12, 2014/15 and 2017/18) have been read once, not twice.

One classification is ours. From 2024/25 UEFA pays for league-phase ranking in two parts: a number of shares at a fixed value, and a share of the money left undistributed when matches are drawn, which it also hands out by ranking. UEFA’s table prints the second beside the win and draw bonuses; we count it with the ranking, because ranking decides it. In 2024/25 that was €4.12m and €0.28m. In 2025/26 that was €7.97m and €0.76m. The 2025/26 figures are calculated from the results and UEFA’s provisional amounts; UEFA has not yet published its table for that season.

2. 16 ties, and what the next round was worth

City won 16 two-legged ties over these seasons, against 14 clubs. For each, this is what UEFA paid for the round the winner went on to.

Read each line on its own. They are alternatives, not a list of clubs that all missed out: if Borussia Mönchengladbach had beaten City in the 2020/21 round of 16, City would never have met Borussia Dortmund in the quarter-final. That is why this table has no total.

A few things stand out:

• Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid each lost to City twice.
• Only 5 of the 16 ties fall in the nine seasons of the finding. City’s deep runs came later.
• City never knocked out an English club. Their one level tie with an English side, Tottenham in 2019, went against them on away goals, as did their tie with Monaco in 2017.
• The payment is UEFA’s fixed amount. A club that goes a round further also plays more matches, and until 2023/24 that meant a larger share of the television pool as well: on average about €1 million a match up to 2018 and about €0.6 million after.

3. Sevilla: when moving up is not a gain

Until 2023/24 the top two in each Champions League group went through and the third dropped into the Europa League. Take City out of a group it qualified from, and the third-placed club goes to the round of 16 instead.

That sounds like a gain. It is not always one.

Twice Sevilla finished third behind City. Twice it dropped into the Europa League and won it. On UEFA’s round payments, the Europa League run paid Sevilla more than a place in the Champions League round of 16 would have: by €4.75m in 2015/16 and by €5.30m in 2022/23. And winning the Europa League carried a place in the next season’s Champions League, which is not in these figures at all.

For most of the other clubs the round of 16 would have paid more. But the comparison is between two things that happened, not a forecast: nobody knows how Sevilla, or anyone else, would have fared in the competition it was not in.

4. The 2023 treble, and what followed from it

City won the 2022/23 Champions League by beating Inter 1-0. The winner’s place brought further opportunities:

• The UEFA Super Cup of 2023. UEFA paid each participant €3.5 million and the winner €1 million more.
• The Club World Cup of December 2023. The European champion entered at the semi-final, so could finish no lower than fourth. The winner’s prize was reported as USD 5 million.
• The Club World Cup of 2025. FIFA gave Europe twelve places: the four Champions League winners of 2021 to 2024, and eight by ranking, with a cap of two clubs per country unless more than two had won the Champions League. City and Chelsea, as champions, were England’s two.

City went out of the 2025 tournament in the round of 16 and came home with a reported USD 51.7 million. FIFA’s prize table explains the figure: USD 38.19 million, the top amount for taking part, plus USD 2 million for each of three group wins and USD 7.5 million for the round of 16.

What if City had not been there? Two cases need keeping apart. If City had simply lost the 2023 final, their results over the four seasons might well have taken them to the tournament by ranking anyway. If City are taken out of European competition altogether, as in this series, they have no ranking, and England’s second place goes to another English club. It was reported at the time that Liverpool were the club the cap kept out. A club taking that place at the lowest European amount would have been paid USD 12.81 million for being there, and USD 26.31 million with City’s results. That is an illustration of what the place was worth, not a figure for Liverpool: FIFA did not publish each club’s amount.

5. Why none of this is added to part 1

Part 1 removes City’s row and hands each European place one berth down the table. A club that stays in the same competition keeps its own results, and a club that moves into a competition is credited with what UEFA paid the club that held the berth it takes, less what it was paid for the place it leaves. City’s payments enter part 1 only where a club moving up takes a berth City itself held; everywhere else, the money in this article is not in part 1 at all. The two answer different questions, what City earned round by round and what other clubs would have been paid, so they are kept apart rather than added.

How we built it

• Results: every Champions League match from 2011/12, from openfootball’s public-domain files; City’s Europa League ties of 2010/11 and 2011/12 from UEFA’s own pages.
• Payments: UEFA’s financial reports, announcements and circulars. The amount UEFA paid for each round was taken down by two independent readers. Each season’s total was then reconciled to the components of City’s line in UEFA’s table of payments: ten of those lines were read twice and four once, and no table exists yet for 2025/26.
• Pounds: the European Central Bank’s average rate for each season.
• Club World Cup: FIFA’s Council decision of March 2023 and its prize announcement of 26 March 2025; City’s total as reported by Sports Illustrated, crediting The Athletic.
• Not modelled: who would have won any tie City did not play in, seeding, coefficients, gate receipts, and anything in later seasons.

This is a count from public information. It is not a claim that any club is owed anything, and it is not legal or financial advice.

More on the Manchester City caseThe ruling, what it could cost City, and what it cost the others→

The Premier League’s statement of 29 September 2026 reported the commission’s finding for the seasons 2009/10 to 2017/18. Manchester City has appealed, as the League confirmed on 2 October 2026. Sanctions have not been determined. Nothing in this article assumes the outcome of the appeal or any sanction.