Celtic could make as much as £67m from the Champions League this season and that is a realistic yet tantalising opportunity for the Scottish Champions as they get set to begin their campaign this evening against Slovakian Champions Slovan Bratislava…

The breakdown of the income Celtic is likely to receive is made up of guaranteed payments that are already secured plus expected stadium reviews for the four home matches plus other associated match-day revenue and also revenue earned from points gained in the group matches. And if enough of those come Celtic’s way then more would be available if Celtic make it through to the play-off round or even beyond.

Here’s the actual breakdown and remember lurking supporters of theRangers, this could have been yours had you  team won the league last season!

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Celtic and every other club in the competition are  already guaranteed £16m just for reaching the Group stages of the new format Champions League, so that is a nice start, thank you very much.

Also guaranteed is the £9m as Celtic’s share of the European TV revenue, so that takes the income up to £25m.

Celtic will also get £5m, as their share of the rest of the world TV revenues, so that’s us up to £30m and counting.

Ticket sales for the four games (minimum) at Celtic Park starting this evening will see at least another £10m added to the total, which is now at £40m.

Add another £5m to that for associated match day revenues that the club make over and above ticket sales in the four massive games, based on previous campaigns. That takes us to £45m which is pretty much guaranteed.

Now we have to consider earnings from success on the field. If Celtic win this evening that’s a guaranteed £2m, if it’s a draw both Celtic and Slovan Bratislava get £800k each and if we lose we get nothing extra. So in each of the eight matches we are playing for £2m each time.

A realistic outcome would be for Celtic to win three games and get a couple of draws while losing three matches.  That would result in additional income of £7.6m and finishing on 11 points, which should be enough for Brendan Rodgers to meet his defined target of reaching the play-off round.

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That would take Celtic’s revenue up to £52.6m and counting.

UEFA also pay £275k  for every ranking position in the league table. The team that tops the table at the end gets  £10m, £9.725m for the team in second, £9.45m for third etc and £275k for the team that finished bottom, £550k for the team that finishes second bottom and so on. So if Celtic finish mid-table then there’s another £5m of revenue coming into the Celtic coffers, which would take the running total up to £57.6m.

Then Celtic would be guaranteed another £8m for reaching the round of 16 Champions League playoff – our calculation goes up to £65.6m plus the ticket revenue for what would be a massive match at Celtic Park, taking us well beyond £67m and that’s before we factor in additional TV revenues from Europe and Rest of the World and all the associated additional match day revenue.

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If we got through the Play-off round – and it would be beyond Brendan’s declared expectations – we’d be guaranteed another £11.5m for reaching the last-16 with more tickets, match day and TV revenues on top. That’s probably highly unlikely but reaching the play-offs is most certainly not and that’s why a realistic financial target for Celtic is going to be £67m.

The importance of winning the Scottish Premiership last season is right there in that magic 67 number.

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