Chelsea winning the Conference League would give them a financial and footballing safety net
The final stretch of Chelsea's season is here and, in contrast to their extremely challenging Premier League run-in, the road to Wroclaw for the Conference League final on May 28 continues to look highly favourable.
Chelsea's massive financial advantage over the rest of the Conference League field has been well documented, and it is readily translatable to the strength of quality on the pitch.
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Quarter-final opponents Legia Warsaw lie fifth in the Polish Ekstraklasa this season and sit 71st in UEFA's club coefficient rankings. Overcoming them would set up a semi-final date with either Rapid Vienna (fifth in the Austrian league and 69th in UEFA's club rankings) or Djurgarden of Sweden (68th). Fiorentina are the only other club in the competition ranked as one of UEFA's top 40 clubs (36th), and Chelsea (ninth) cannot meet them until the final.
Winning this competition would therefore occupy a strange place in the Chelsea psyche.
Becoming the first club (again) to complete the set of major domestic and European trophies has real meaning to many supporters. Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly are eager to lift their first silverware since purchasing the club from Roman Abramovich three years ago, and it would also be an important milestone for head coach Enzo Maresca and his young squad.
All that said, it is difficult to imagine much appetite inside or outside Chelsea for an open-top bus parade from Stamford Bridge to Eel Brook Common if Maresca's team go all the way, and anything less would be widely regarded as a significant embarrassment as well as a failure.
Regardless of how it ends, Chelsea's maiden run in UEFA's third-tier competition will not move the needle financially, relative to their all-important pursuit of Champions League qualification, which will be decided no later than three days before the Conference League final when Maresca's team wrap up their 2024-25 Premier League campaign away at Nottingham Forest.
Champions League football was worth around £80million ($102m) to Chelsea in 2021-22 and 2022-23; the financial rewards of the Conference League are paltry in comparison.
'If we take a look at West Ham, when they won it in 2022-23, they got €22million (£18.8million) in prize money,' football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells The Athletic. 'Plus they had the benefit of seven home games. They wouldn't have been able to charge full price because of the quality of the opposition, but they probably grossed €30m (£25.7m).
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'Then you factor in spending to improve the quality of the squad (to cope with more games). You've also got transportation costs, accommodation costs. You could also argue that it cost them as far as their league position was concerned (West Ham finished 14th in 2022-23), and that's worth £3m per place.
'Then the players would have had bonuses for winning the competition. So by the time you factor in all your costs, you're talking, in my view, low single millions of profit (at best).'
Chelsea are not quite in the same position. Their relentlessly high transfer spend always accounts for regular European football to a degree that other Premier League clubs do not. Their squad has not been stressed by this Conference League run — Maresca was able to employ wholesale rotation for the league phase — and, at least to date, their domestic league position has not suffered as a result of progressing to the knockout rounds.
But the most tangible benefit to Chelsea of winning the Conference League would be the automatic passage it carries into next season's Europa League. That will not matter if Maresca delivers the top-five finish in the Premier League that is almost certain to be enough to bring Champions League football back to Stamford Bridge in 2025-26, but it will be a valuable insurance policy if they end up missing out.
Opta currently projects Chelsea as having a 43.4 per cent chance of finishing this season somewhere in the Premier League's top five, but their likeliest final league position is sixth (27.2 per cent chance). If they were to slip even further to seventh (19 per cent chance), it opens up the nightmare potential scenario of Aston Villa or Crystal Palace winning the FA Cup and bumping them back into the Conference League, as Manchester United did to them last season.
Europa League participation in 2025-26 would not be a thrilling prospect either, but it would be a clear and important step up for Chelsea in financial terms.
'Manchester United grossed €32m (£27.4m) in 2022-23 and they were knocked out in the quarter-finals, so by the time you factor in the additional matches, the additional prize money, for winning it, you're likely to be somewhere in the region of €45m (£38.6m) to €50m (£42.8m) as a big Premier League club,' Maguire adds.
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'Plus you've got your home matches, so if you add six of those in, you're probably looking in the region of €60m (£51.4m). You've got additional operating costs, but the net benefit from a good year in the Europa League for a club with the status of Chelsea is around €25m (£21.4m) to €30m (£25.7m).'
The significance of that increase in revenue is underlined by the last two years of Chelsea's published accounts, in which the controversial internal sales of the two hotels outside Stamford Bridge and Chelsea Women were required to offset huge operating losses and keep the club on the right side of the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules. A punishment for failing to stay within UEFA's financial limits — which do not allow such transactions to be factored into compliance calculations — is currently being discussed.
That is more likely to be a fine than a sporting penalty, allowing Chelsea to embark on a new European adventure next season. Ownership and supporters would very much like it to be back in the Champions League, but lifting the Conference League in May would at least guarantee Europa League football and prevent them from being a giant among relative minnows again.
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