UEFA has moved to increase the financial rewards from playing in the Europa League by announcing prize money for the tournament will increase by 65 per cent.
An increase in television money for UEFA will also see prize money for the Champions League go up but the disparity with the Europa League will not be so great from 2015-18.
At the moment, clubs in the Champions League earn an average of four and half times as much as those playing in the Europa League, but in the future UEFA will fix the ratio at 3.3 to one. Solidarity payments to those clubs who fail to qualify for the group stages will also rise significantly, a stage several Scottish clubs - including St Johnstone and Motherwell - have fallen at in recent years.
Entrants this year will receive a minimum of £145,000 and £300,000 if they reach the second round of qualifying. Competing in third round would yield a total of £455,000.
The prize money for the winner of the Champions League final will rise from 10.5m euros (£7.6m) to 15million euros (£10.9m), and the winner of the competition could earn a maximum of 54.5m euros (£39.6m) in prize money plus TV cash from their share of the market pool.
UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino said: "UEFA is really pleased that the new distribution system not only provides for a substantial rise in monies received by clubs participating in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, but also strengthens UEFA's solidarity principle, namely ensuring an even more substantial increase in solidarity payments to clubs.
"In this way, the new system provides a better deal for everyone, especially those clubs which did not qualify to the group stage of either of the two UEFA club competitions.
"This is a perfect example of the proper implementation of the solidarity principle which forms an essential part of UEFA's key values."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article