Uefa figures reveal Leicester banked more money from Europe last season than Champions League winners Real Madrid and Europa League winners Manchester United
Leicester City made more money from playing in Europe last season than Champions League winners Real Madrid, new figures from Uefa reveal.
The European football governing body has published the exact sums earned in prize money and TV payments by clubs playing in the Champions League and Europa League last season.
Leicester, currently in the Premier League relegation zone and without a permanent manager, received €81.7m (£73.2m) from Uefa for their run to last season's Champions League quarter-finals.
That was more than any other English side and nearly double the €44.5m (£39.9m) picked up by Manchester United for winning the Europa League.
It even exceeded the €81.1m (£72.7m) earned by eventual champions Real Madrid who won their third title in four years.
Arsenal and Manchester City, who both exited in the first knock-out stage of the Champions League, made €64.6m (£57.9m) and €50m (£44.8m) respectively. Meanwhile Tottenham's failure the Champions League group stage into the knock-out rounds of the Europa League, where they were swiftly dumped out by Belgian side Gent, earned them €45.7m (£41m).
English clubs' payments
Southampton, who flattered to deceive in their first ever Europa League, took home just €15.2m (£13.6m) after failing to get out of their group.
Champions League runners-up Juventus topped the European earning charts with €110m (£98.6m).
10 best-paid clubs from Uefa
In total Uefa paid out around €1.8bn (£1.6bn) to clubs in the Champions League and Europa League last season, money that was distributed based on performance and the size of national TV deals.
The distribution of TV money between clubs of a certain country is equally based on how a club performs in Europe and how it fared in the previous domestic season.
Leicester's chunky pay-packet was based on the UK's £300m TV pool — the largest in Europe — their status as 2016 domestic champions and their quarter-final finish being better than any of their domestic rivals.
Juventus topped the pile as while Italy's TV pool is much smaller at €112m, they only had to share it with Napoli and were also reigning Serie A champions.
| Round | Prize money |
| Group stage basic pay | €12.7m |
| Group stage bonus | €1.5m per win/€500,000 per draw |
| Last 16 | €6m |
| Quarter-final | €6.5m |
| Semi-final | €7.5m |
| Final | €15.5m winner/€11m runner-up |
United's €44.5m from the Europa League represented more than 10 per cent of the entire €423m paid out by Uefa to the 56 clubs that took part.
Meanwhile runners-up Ajax made just €16.2m.
That’s primarily due to the relatively small number of English clubs who competed in the competition last season and — with the exception of United — their poor performance.
As a cup winner — United qualified to the Europa League by winning last year’s FA Cup — the Red Devils are entitled to the biggest slice of the TV money set aside by Uefa for domestic performance.
Meanwhile United only had to split the other half of the TV money with Southampton, rather than two other English teams as is usually common in the Europa League.
With Saints failing to reach the knockout stage and Tottenham only lasting one round after being relegated from the Champions League, United will have been entitled to 100 per cent of the TV money for the last four rounds of the competition.