Make a wish, it’s raining hundreds of millions of crowns. Czech football has days ahead of it, in which its income can even reach a ten-digit sum in one go. Sparta and Slavia are fighting for the Champions League, and the potential influx of money can fundamentally lift the strongest domestic sport.
That song gives the football players goosebumps on the pitch. The music, the logo, the special balls and the uniform design of the stadium all make the Champions League a carnival of emotions. However, the emotions will also be felt by those who manage the club’s cash register.
The big week is here: Sparta against Sweden’s Malmö on Tuesday, Slavia against France’s Lille on Wednesday. Prague’s big clubs are knocking on the door of exceptionality, and especially Sparta has the door wide open after the opening 2-0 win in Sweden. Slavia, on the other hand, have to erase the 0:2 loss, but the beauty of football is its unpredictability.
What is predictable, on the other hand, are the amounts guaranteed by the Champions League.
You won’t find anything bigger in European sport. Half a billion crowns can flow to Letná or Eden (ideally both places) just for the promotion itself. This is a staggering sum considering that the annual budgets of both units are in the higher hundreds of millions of crowns, but generally under a billion.
Just for comparison, when in the fall of 2023 and in the spring of 2024, Czech football clubs advanced unusually far in lower European competitions, Sparta, Slavia and Plzeň found a total of around 850 million crowns in their accounts in April for their triple campaign. Now you can earn much more in just twenty-four hours.
And that’s not even talking about the core group of the glittering club competition. In it, each of the teams would play at least eight matches, and with the way people go to Czech football stadiums now, it is practically certain that they would immediately sell out their four home matches in Vršovice and Letná.
According to Ondřej Kasík, Sparta’s director of communications, a once-sold-out summer stand will generate around twenty million crowns at pricing corresponding to the Champions League.
For “S” from Prague, it is first and foremost a sports dream come true, a ticket to the ball of the European elite. The clubs owned by the dollar billionaires Daniel Křetínský and Pavel Tykač are not dependent on the Champions League for their existence – even in the Czech Republic, it is not possible to build a football business plan in this way, because participation in the Champions League is something completely exceptional and projecting budgets based on exceptional circumstances defies logic.
From which it logically follows that when an extraordinary situation comes (Sparta last played in the Champions League exactly twenty years ago), the financial directors cheer just like the players after the final whistle.
Judge for yourself by the numbers for performances in individual matches. A win in the basic group match will bring 53 million crowns into the club’s coffers, a draw 17.6 million. If we then pour a healthy amount of optimism into our veins and imagine that one of the two Czech teams will see the elimination fights, it will gradually come to 25 million crowns. For participating in the round of 16, the team would have collected an astronomical 278 million crowns.
The amounts are then increased by hundreds of millions up to the highest goal for the overall winner: another 631 million crowns. That would be basically one annual budget for Sparta or Slavia. After all, even the defeated finalist of the Champions League won’t shave and will get an extra 467 million.
A title with a fat bonus
It’s not just about the Prague teams, their domestic competitors can also start to rejoice. “Assuming that their improved financial situation manifests itself in an appetite to buy players in the domestic competition, it can thus indirectly benefit others as well,” mentioned renowned economist and big football fan Petr Zahradník, how the money from the Champions League pumps up the football business in the Czech Republic as a whole.
It is enough to take a quick look at the budgets of other clubs – in the imaginary shared fourth position last season, Slovácko and Jablonec, both clubs managed roughly 150 million crowns a year. And maybe a Karviná like that has to make do with seventy million.
Viktoria Plzeň, the third strongest team, is fighting for the European League on Thursday. This offers a purely sporting better chance of success, but financially it is a poor relative – Pilsen would collect “only” about 100 million crowns for the promotion. This is also a major contribution to the budget. But at the same time, so much can be earned by developing talents and their subsequent sale.
Even much more: in recent days, Viktoria sold stopper Robin Hranáč to the German Hoffenheim for around 250 million crowns. According to speculation, Spartan stopper Martin Vitík could go in the same direction for around 400 million crowns. As Ondřej Kasík, Sparta’s head of communications, adds, the accumulated experience from European competitions significantly increases the players’ price tag.
All these are extreme amounts by Czech standards, but they show that there is a way forward. Even if Plzeň were to win regularly in the Europa League, they would have to go really far to collect the same as for Hranáč. For a win in a duel in the group stage, a bonus of 11.3 million comes from UEFA, in the Champions League it is 53 million crowns.
Even in sports, however, money makes money. The influx of significant financial resources may also be triggering a frantic hunt for reinforcements and an attack on the domestic title. Not that victory in the Czech league generates huge income in the football context, but this year, especially, one monstrous bonus is associated with it: direct promotion to the basic group of the Champions League for the 2025-26 season.
In the language of accounting closings, more than half a billion bonus. And that even without the need to zigzag through the uncertain monkey track of preliminary rounds and qualifications.
“It’s a huge goal and we will subordinate everything to it,” Slavist chairman of the board Jaroslav Tvrdík told the club podcast Desítka z Edenu in June. Letná doesn’t even have to hear anything like that officially. The club of the majority shareholder Daniel Křetínský has on paper a project for a new national stadium for 4.5 billion crowns. In that case, every crown, or perhaps rather euro, is good.
2024-08-27 06:35:23