Chelsea completed the set of European trophies when they won the Europa Conference League last May. But financially, their exploits on the continent were a damp squib.

UEFA have confirmed that Chelsea earned £18m for triumphing in the Conference League final, where they beat Real Betis 4-1 in Wroclaw.

It was a welcome first trophy under the ownership of BlueCo, whose left-field approach to running the club they bought for £2.5bn almost exactly three years earlier had until that point created more embarrassment than glory for Chelsea fans.

They went on to win the far more lucrative Club World Cup that summer. In the end, that earned them about £85m in prize money. And with Chelsea required by UEFA to keep their spending within certain limits because of their FFP breaches under BlueCo, that windfall came at the perfect time.

This season, Chelsea are in the Champions League, where they have bypassed the play-off phase taking place this week and qualified straight for the round of 16. En route, they have earned in the region of £80m, illustrating just how wide the gap is between Europe’s first and third-tier club competitions.

“The Conference League is for the fans only,” says University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to The Chelsea Chronicle about UEFA’s annual financial report, which was released late last week.

“It’s not a competition that finance directors want to be in, nor the club owners. A Thursday night in Tirana doesn’t tick a lot of boxes.”

In total, UEFA distributed £3bn to clubs participating in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, as well as in solidarity to non-participating clubs and the grassroots game.

But while the amount that UEFA pays clubs is increasing, the way that £3bn is spread out among teams is becoming increasingly stratified.

Have Chelsea made the right decision to wait so long for a front-of-shirt sponsor?

“Chelsea’s approach to front-of-shirt sponsorship is baffling. They clearly have a view about their brand value and merchandise. One can only assume that isn’t being replicated by interested parties.

– Kieran Maguire, football finance expert

For context, Kazakh side Kairat are likely to have earned more prize money for picking up just one point and finishing bottom of the Champions League league phase table this season than Chelsea banked for winning the Conference League outright in 2024-25.

“The fact that Chelsea, over the course of a full season, earned one quarter of what they took home from Club World Cup is indicative of the situation,” Maguire says.

“If you’re a club from Albania, the Republic of Ireland or wherever, the Conference League is brilliant, but it was not designed for a club of Chelsea’s stature to be in.

“The fact that Chelsea were there as an indictment of their poor league performance, so they were among the big losers in last season’s financial landscape. It is seen as more as a punishment to them.”

Of course, it’s not just prize money that teams competing in Europe earn. In the Conference League, Chelsea also had six extra matchdays at Stamford Bridge.

Based on their average ticketing yield, those fixtures are likely to have been worth in the region of £14.5m to the Blues, pushing their total takings from their European campaign to just north of £32m.

However, revenue isn’t profit. There are plenty of costs associated with hosting matches at the Bridge. Chelsea spend millions on staffing, utilities and the like every season. In the Champions League, those costs are consumed many times over by prize money. But in the Conference League, the margins are much tighter.

On top of that, Chelsea must fork out appearance fees to players, as well as performance-related bonuses and so on. Those contractual clauses won’t move the needle too much, but they are a factor all the same.

Because of these factors and more, many Premier League executives say that qualifying for either of the two more junior European competitions sometimes only becomes profitable after a good run, getting to the early knockout rounds at least.

And with six extra games and thousands of miles of travel comes extra demands on the squad physically, mentally and financially – recently, Todd Boehly said that playing fewer games of lower financial value would allow him to cut the size of the squad and his single biggest expense in football: the wage bill.

So while Chelsea fans might have had a romping time in Poland last May, the financial legacy of the Conference League victory is a lot more muted. (The Chelsea Chronicle)