Celtic’s €7.5m Champions League advantage over city rivals

Simply for taking part in six Champions League matches Celtic will be paid €7.5m more directly from UEFA than their city rivals.

Lazy elements of the media like to throw around claims of £40m jackpot but as ever things are a lot more complex than that.

UEFA use a number of different factors to split up their Champions League prize pot with Inside SPFL providing a detailed breakdown.

Celtic will pick up €28.31m without selling a ticket, pie, bovril or winning a point, across the city that figure will be €20.839m.

€28.31m currently converts to around £23.8m, three wins and a place in the last 16 adds €18m to that figure.

Earlier this week Celtic put tickets on sale with the three match package costing Season Ticket holders £129 with concessions available. Taking an average ticket price of £43 per game Celtic can expect to generate around £7.5m before deductions and costs such as VAT and policing.

Although there are 10,000 tickets less to sell at Ibrox they can make up that shortfall by selling tickets at an average of £51.

Ultimately it is about how you spend that money, not a Balance Sheet contest. With Peter Lawwell pushed into the background Ajeti, Barkas, Soro, Klimala and Bolingoli have been replaced by Kyogo, Hatate, O’Riley, Hart, Juranovic and Jota.

If Celtic continue to allow the football manager to dictate signing policy and leave the accountants to do whatever they are good at the quality of players should continue to improve giving the club the best prospects of success and progress.