City have secured qualification to next season's Champions League on the final day of the Premier League season
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The UEFA Champions League trophy
The UEFA Champions League trophy (Image: Giuseppe Cottini/Getty Images)
Manchester City will be playing Champions League football next season after they secured a top five finish in the Premier League on the final day of the season.
The Blues were 2-0 winners over Fulham at Craven Cottage on Sunday. Ilkay Gundogan put City ahead in the first half with a stunning overhead kick before an Erling Haaland penalty in the final quarter secured the points and a third place finish.
City will automatically enter the league phase, meaning they will pocket £15.7m just for qualifying for the competition.
They will play eight matches in the league phase and each point they earn will be of financial value. For example, each league phase victory in the Champions League this season was worth £1.77m and each draw was worth £590,000.
Automatic qualification to the last-16 of the competition earned clubs £9.3m this term. Furthermore, each position in the league phase table was worth £232,000, meaning Young Boys, who finished 36th and bottom of the standings, earned that figure with an additional £232,000 added for every higher ranking following the conclusion of the first stage of the competition.
It means the financial benefits of competing and succeeding in the Champions League are much stronger than they are in the Europa League and City will breathe a sigh of relief they have avoided falling into the Europe's secondary competition next season.
This season's Champions League winners - which will be either Inter Milan or PSG - can expect to pocket close to £100m in prize money. City earned around £85million for their 2023 triumph.
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