It wasn't the fairy-tale ending to their Premier League season that Nottingham Forest had been hoping for, but a seventh-placed finish and with it European football assured made it a campaign to remember.
Forest knew the stakes ahead of the home clash with Chelsea on Sunday and with results elsewhere having gone in their favour, with Newcastle United and Aston Villa both defeated, a win against the west London side would have secured UEFA Champions League football for Forest, while a draw would have punched their ticket to the Europa League.
Alas, it wasn’t to be Nuno Espirito Santo’s men, who for so long this past season has looked destined to upset the odds and book their place at the top table of European club knockout football, something that would have delivered transformational revenues for Forest thanks to the lucrative nature of the revamped competition.
While there will be some disappointment and understandably so, the club, twice European Cup winners, have European football to look forward to next season for the first time since 1996.
In terms of what it will do for the club’s finances, a spot in the Europa Conference League has far smaller sums of cash than that of the Champions League and, indeed, the Europa League.
But they are meaningful nonetheless and will provide the club with a cash boost next season, one that will enable them to enter the transfer market in a stronger position than last summer, better preparing them to make a tilt at European qualification a regular one rather than something fleeting.
For qualifying for the Conference League, based on the figures distributed for 2024/25, Forest will earn themselves €3.17 million (£2.66m). There are six guaranteed games in the competition with three of them, of course, at home. There is €400,000 (£335,000) handed out per win, while a draw brings in €133,000 (£111,000).
There are then additional bonuses that can be added on. Each club which qualifies for the league phase of the competition will also receive a bonus payment based on their league ranking, which is the total €18.6m (£15.6m) prize fund available for clubs, divided into 666 equal shares of €28,000 (£23,500).
The highest ranked team in the league phase gets €1m (£840,000), with the lowest of the 26 qualifying teams receiving the £23,500 sum.
Then there are additional funds to come from the qualification for the last 16. The clubs that finished the league phase between first and eighth receive €400,000 (£335,000) and those that secured between ninth and 16th get €200,000 (£168,000). There is an additional €800,000 (£670,000) for booking a spot in the knockout stages.
The money for progression sees clubs earn €1.3m (£1.1m) for the quarter finals, €2.5m (£2.1m) for the semi finals and €4m (£3.4m) for making the final, with the winners receiving around €7m (£5.9m) for their success. That takes the overall available prize money for winning the competition to £15.6m, a welcome sum but one some £50m shy of what they could have conservatively achieved in the Champions League.
There is also the matchday revenue to factor in. Forest earn around £800,000 per home game for a sell-out meaning that some £2.4m in additional income would be also factored in for three guaranteed home games, potentially rising as high as £4.8m were they to reach the final. That would take the potential attributed income to the Conference League to £20.4m.
Success in Europe would aid Forest’s coefficient ranking, helpful when it comes to taking a slice of the value pillar that exists in the Champions League and Europa League, while the money will aid the ability to invest in some new talent over the summer.
For Forest fans, they still get a European adventure, while the seventh-placed Premier League finish has also aided their cause this season, improving the money that they will receive via central funding from the Premier League by £28.1m based on last year’s £11.3m and this season’s £39.4m received.
It has been a season that has still delivered major financial gains.