SOCCER:A FULL house in Tallaght next Tuesday is potentially just the first of the financial windfalls heading Shamrock Rovers' way in the wake of Wednesday's impressive display at the Parken Stadium.
And the gate receipts for the Champions League third qualifying round would be dwarfed by the rewards that await Michael O’Neill’s side if they can can overturn the single goal deficit and beat Copenhagen to progress. After that, surviving the next and final qualifying round would have the potential to utterly transform the long term fortunes of the club.
As things stand Rovers have two shots at playing in the Europa League group stages and one at participating in the game’s most glittering prize, the Champions League. Beat Copenhagen and O’Neill’s side will go forward to the draw for the fourth or “play-off” round in the latter competition.
At that stage victory would guarantee them a place amongst the continent’s elite, while defeat would automatically bring a place in the group stages of the larger but less lucrative Europa League. In the event that they go out against Copenhagen on Tuesday, they will go into the Europa League’s play-off round.
The Dubliners might actually be better placed to get through the Champions League play-off round than the Europa League one.
Eliminating Copenhagen would mean taking over the Danish club’s seeding in the next round and after this week’s first legs, possible opponents would include the likes of Viktoria Plzen (Czech Republic), Sturm Graz (Austria) or Wisla Krakow ( Poland).
None would be easy opponents by any stretch of the imagination but then none would be ranked nearly as highly as the Danes.
If, on the other hand, Rovers go into the Europa league play-offs they would be unseeded. With Celtic, Atletico Madrid and Lazio amongst the sides they could be drawn against, there is the potential for a tie that would bring large, one-off revenues but getting through would be another matter.
The scale of the rewards for making the group stages of the two competitions, meanwhile, is fairly breathtaking.
Last year, each of the 32 clubs that participated in the group stages of the Champions League received a basic €3.8 million plus €550,000 per game, with a bonus of €800,000 for each win and €400,000 for a draw. Making the last 16, as Copenhagen did, brings a further €3 million.
Europa League group stage participants, by comparison, get a basic €640,000 plus €60,000 per match, with bonuses of €140,000 and €70,000 respectively. At the top end of things, Fulham, who were the biggest earners from the inaugural Europa League, banked just over €10 million in prize-money and television revenues from their involvement. For Inter Milan, who won the Champions League that year, the corresponding figure was €48.6 million.
In the case of Copenhagen it is estimated that turnover for this year will be just short of €50 million if they play in the group stages of the more attractive competition this season and roughly 40 per cent of that if they do not. To the Danish club then, the outcome of next Tuesday’s game means a good deal more than mere pride.
At a club like Rovers, with a base turnover figure of around €2.5 million, the benefits would obviously be proportionally far higher again. Even in the current economic climate, making the Champions League could quite conceivably mean a six-fold increase in turnover.
Games would have to be moved to the RDS or the Aviva Stadium, new sponsorships would be expected, while around half of the players’ contracts would have to be extended, presumably, to ensure availability for the later group games in December, more than a month after the end of the league season here.
Managing that sort of sudden success is a test that administrations at clubs across Europe have failed, in some cases spectacularly, in recent years, with some struggling to survive in subsequent years when it wasn’t repeated.
Achieving it is the first aim, though, and that much is down to O’Neill and his players.
