The business behind the UEFA EURO 2024
What impact does the EURO have on UEFA’s financials and how does it stack up against the other international football properties of Champions League and the World Cup?
EURO 2024 — another summer miracle incoming
Today marks the start of the UEFA European Championships (EURO) 2024. Germany will host the month-long football festivity, where we will be blessed with up to three top-tier games a day. Public viewings, beers and emotional distress from the 11 men that kick around a ball for your country…no better way to enjoy the summer!
The EURO is the second largest national team football event in the world, only behind the FIFA World Cup. After a COVID impacted EURO 2020 (that was postponed by one year to the summer of 2021 and played in stadiums all across Europe), this edition will be a return to normalcy, with full stadiums, public viewings, and fan zones (based on the experience from the 2006 World Cup in Germany, these will be amazing). It will also be a return to unimpeded revenues.
Before we head to the pubs, beer gardens and any other form of public viewing, let’s take a look at how much the EURO contributes to the viewership and revenue of UEFA, especially also compared to the UEFA Champions League and FIFA World Cup.
The EURO is reaching billions every 4 years
24 nations will compete for the EURO 2024 trophy this summer, split across six groups of four teams each. 16 teams will advance to the knockout stage (all teams that finish their groups in first or second place, plus the four best third placed teams across all groups). This updated format was first introduced in the EURO 2016, as previously there were only 16 teams that made it to the EURO. This resulted in a jump from 31 to 51 games being played in the tournament, which naturally had a big positive impact on the revenues generated for the tournament, as we will see later.
Another funny quirk about this format is that without its introduction in 2016, the eventual winner Portugal would not have made it out of the group stages, as they were one of best third placed teams in the group stages (previously only the first two teams per group made it through to the knockout stages).
The EURO is among the few top-tier premium international football events in the world, in a class with the Champions League and the World Cup in terms of viewership and revenues.
Live unique reach for the entire tournament has been consistent at 1.9 to 2.0 billion over the last three editions of the EURO and total cumulative live audiences of 5.0 billion for EURO 2016 and 5.2 billion for EURO 2020. The finals attracted a live average audience of 284.4 million in EURO 2016, growing to 328.0 million for EURO 2020 (peak viewership at around 600 million viewers).
With the growing interest in the women’s game and the great success that the EURO 2022 in England was, it is interesting to see how far they have already come. They reached a cumulative global live audience of over 365 million in 2022, doubling their figure from the previous tournament in 2017 of 178 million, and a +214% increase compared to the 115 million in 2013. The finals achieved a global cumulative live viewership of 50 million, 3x more than the 15 million in 2017.
Contrasting the EURO to the other premier international football properties is somewhat difficult, as they do not all report and publish the same figures. Nevertheless, it gives some semblance of the magnitude of each of the competitions. FIFA claims that the World Cup final in Qatar in 2022 reached 1.5 billion people alone, while the Champions League final usually garners around 450 million unique individuals every year (as an added reference, the last Super Bowl managed to reach around 250 million viewers). The World Cup final is an entirely separate beast, that nothing can hold a stick to. The EURO and Champions League final however are of rather similar size, with the EURO final edging out the Champions League final.
The EURO as the perfect complement to the Champions League cash-cow
Looking at the overall UEFA revenue picture, the spikes in revenue in the EURO years is pretty evident. In non-EURO years, 85–90% of UEFA’s revenues come from Club competitions (Champions League, Europa League, Conference League and Super Cup), with national team competitions bringing in only 5–10% of revenues (Nations League, EURO Qualifiers). However, in EURO years, there is a much different picture, with national team competitions bringing in around 45% of the total revenues.
On the Club competition side, the Champions League is the dominant revenue driver, making up €3.21bn in the 2022/23 season, and forecast to bring in €3.23bn in the 2023/24 season. The EURO 2024 is forecast to generate €2.44bn, below the Champions League, but across a lot fewer games (51 vs 125) and a much more condensed timeframe (1 vs 9 months). No stranger to changing (and unnecessarily complicating) a tournament format, the UEFA has changed the Champions League format for the upcoming season, extending it to 189, in an effort to further increase its revenues.
The impact of a format change can also be seen below, comparing the EURO 2012 with the EURO 2016 figures, where the format change added an additional 20 games to get to the 51 games the tournament has now. Revenues jumped from €1.39bn to €1.92bn. Besides the COVID impacted EURO 2020, there has been a continual growth in the tournament revenues, with an expected significant jump for this year’s edition (29.8% over the EURO 2020 figures) from €1.88bn to €2.44bn (comparing it to the EURO 2016 figures, it is a more reasonable 13.0% growth on a per tournament basis).
Net revenues are expected to stay constant to the EURO 2020 figures for this year’s edition, forecast at around €1.2bn. Below is a breakdown for the past five EURO, all the way back to EURO 2004 in Portugal (only gross and net revenue forecasts are currently available for EURO 2024).
Just out of curiosity, I also took a look at how these figures breakdown on a per game basis, which you can see below. The expansion of the tournament format has naturally led to a dilution of both per game revenue and cost, showing the diminishing returns of adding additional games, but also highlighting the efficiency gains benefits thereof on the cost side. It appears that EURO 2024 will reach pre-format-change revenue per game levels at €47.9m, though net revenue per game still peaked in EURO 2008 and 2012 at €28.6m and €28.8m respectively.
How does this stack up against the two other major international football tournaments, the Champions League and World Cup? As can be seen below, the EURO is still significantly below the revenue capacity of the World Cup (~41% of its revenue) and more in line with the Champions League revenues. On a per game basis, the EURO generates €47.9m, above the Champions League at €25.8m, but still only slightly above half that of the World Cup at €92.1m.
The Champions League remains UEFAs most lucrative property on a per tournament basis, and especially when considering a 4-year cycle (which the EURO and the World Cup follow), even eclipsing the World Cup revenues under such consideration. With the upcoming format adjustments to both the Champions League (increase number of games from 125 to 189) and the World Cup (expansion from 32 to 48 teams, increasing the number of games from 64 to 104) the gap towards the EURO will further increase.
It will be interesting to see whether UEFA decides to ride out the current growth they are experiencing from tournament to tournament or if they believe they need to tinker around with the format again. The current media landscape is characterized by tier 1 properties that are increasingly taking up the value and attention from viewers. The EURO firmly belongs among the tier 1 properties in international football, due to the quality of the competition, with nearly all global football powerhouses (besides Brazil and Argentina) playing in the tournament. As such, they will continue to see revenue growth, as a can’t miss property on the European broadcasting and sponsorship market. There is also limited direct football competition in the summers the EURO are played. The Copa America (smaller viewership and economic potential) only periodically falls in the same summer (3-year cycle vs the 4-year cycle of the EURO), with its games not overlapping due to time zone differences, and the Olympics starting after the EURO already ended. The EURO may additionally even benefit from the World Cup’s new format that could dilute the competition and corresponding fan interest, elevating the EURO as a quality property even further.
Who will win though?
Tough one, there is a small(ish) group of favorites (as also seen so by the bookmakers) that include England (+300), France (+340), Germany (+550), Spain (+700) and Portugal (+800), with all other nations at more than +1000 (if you want to be bold, Luxembourg, Estonia and Kazakhstan all share the worst odds at +75’000). However, the EURO is no stranger to absolute shockers, such as Denmark in 1992 or Greece in 2004 (they had a 150–1 chance of winning the tournament).
Alternatively, we can also look at it from a per team market value (according to “transfermarkt.com”), where we see the following picture:
1) England: €1.52bn
Most valuable players: Jude Bellingham (€180m), Phil Foden (€150m), Bukayo Saka (€140m)
2) France: €1.23bn
Most valuable players: Kylian Mbappé (€180m), Eduardo Camavinga (€100m), Aurélien Tchouaméni (€100m)
3) Portugal: €1.05bn
Most valuable players: Rafael Leao (€90m), Ruben Dias (€80m), Bruno Fernandes (€70m)
4) Spain: €0.97bn
Most valuable players: Rodri (€120m), Lamine Yamal (€90m), Pedri (€80m)
5) Germany: €0.85bn
Most valuable players: Florian Wirtz (€130m), Jamal Musiala (€120m), Leroy Sané (€70m)
We see the same five favorites as with the bookmakers, but in a slightly different order, though England and France appear to be the top two contenders for the EURO 2024.
As a lifelong England supporter, an existence characterized by utter dejection and pain, it seems wild to see them be the top favorite, though they do have the most loaded attacking front out of all contenders, complemented with quite a suspect defense though. I need to see it to believe it, before I would ever bet England to win anything (the decades of built-up scar tissue weigh heavy). And also, the age old saying “defense wins championships” has stuck around for a reason and gives additional pause.
In any case, we are in for a football treat over the next 31 days, and I for one can’t wait for the tournament to kick-off with the hosts Germany facing off against Scotland.
One random fact
The Foreign Office of the UK issued the following travel guidance for Brits going to Germany for the EURO this summer (which is quite funny considering the British pub culture):
“Beer can be stronger than in the UK, so drink responsibly, know your limits and respect local laws. You may not be let into the stadium if you drink too much.”
Thanks for reading
I hope you enjoyed this breakdown and gained a new-found appreciation for the EURO and how it fits into the larger international footballing landscape, as well as why it will continue to flourish and grow. If you have, please consider sharing it with your friends and subscribing, much appreciated!
The AO, a page dedicated to unveiling the business dynamics behind the sports media industry, aimed at giving context on the strategic considerations behind some of the biggest sporting events and decisions.
If that sounds appealing to you, then feel free to follow The AO, which is completely free and releases every 2 weeks.
