Liverpool are three games away from potentially winning the Champions League.
A 3-3 draw at home to Benfica on Wednesday night was enough to see Jurgen Klopp's men earn safe passage through to the last four of the competition having won the first leg 3-1 in Portugal, and the Reds will face Spanish side Villarreal over two legs in the semi-final, with the victors facing either Manchester City or Real Madrid in a Paris showdown on May 28.
Having been absent from European football's biggest and most lucrative knockout club competition for much of the early reign of Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool have established themselves among the elite contenders once again in recent years, with their 2018 final appearance followed by victory in the competition 12 months later. The money that comes with Champions League qualification and success in the competition has been a major boon to the Reds and an increasingly vital source of revenues to help them compete.
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Victory over Benfica puts them a step closer to glory, although facing a Villarreal side that ended the hopes of a fancied Bayern Munich won't be an easy task, nor will whoever lies in wait should the Reds get the better of Unai Emery's men.
As it stands the Reds have earned around £87m from the Champions League thus far following last night's success, although with a Covid-related rebate due to UEFA from all participating clubs that figure will likely be closer to £85m. But should the Reds make it to the final and go on to win the competition then the prize money for making it to Paris and subsequently lifting the trophy would stand at around £43.2m, according to figures presented by football finance expert Swiss Ramble on Twitter.
That figure, added to the £84.8m already banked after the rebate takes the total up to £128m should the Reds win the competition, with that total potentially rising to around £130m when the additional game and TV money is factored in. That would make it £17m more valuable to the club than the last time that they won the competition, not to mention the positive impact it would have on the club's UEFA coefficient, where the higher the coefficient ranking the bigger the share of the money pot. Liverpool currently sit 13th on the 10-year list but will move into 10th place by the time next season's competition money is handed out, a £2.9m increase.
