This weekend the Copa del Rey faces a round of 32 full of incentives. Much of the focus will be on the debut of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid and Osasuna in the KO tournament, which will later travel to Saudi Arabia to play the Spanish Super Cup. Before, the first two will have to visit the two survivors – Arandina and Barbastro, respectively – who play in the fourth category of Spanish football (2ºRFEF). In this round, modest football still has many things to say with the presence of up to four more teams -Unionistas, Castellón, Málaga and Lugo- from the 1ºRFEF, which will also deal with four ‘first’ teams.
This is possible thanks to the new cup format that the RFEF, then chaired by Luis Rubiales, launched three seasons ago, to give more visibility to the lower category teams. Single-match playoffs and in the field of the lower category entity helped to continue feeding the spirit of David against Goliath so characteristic of this competition. This new format not only benefits modest football at a sporting level, it also provided a new economic incentive for the coffers of amateur football clubs.
It should be remembered that the money distributed by the RFEF for the Copa del Rey depends on audiovisual income. The Federation earns approximately 33 million euros from the broadcast of the tournament and as established in Royal Decree Law 5/2015 in its article 8, 90% of the collection – around 29 million – was allocated to professional football (First and Second) and the remaining 10% for teams in the rest of the categories.
But everything changed with the arrival of the new format, which brought under its arm a modification to equalize the distribution of income and raise up to 40% the piece of cake allocated to the promotion of amateur football and the teams of other categories that participate in the competition. . n. And finally, the percentage assigned to clubs in the National Professional Soccer League was reduced to 60%. This distribution, in turn, was divided 90-10 in favor of the First Division entities.
How is this money distributed?
Well, 50% of the proceeds raised by the First Division teams and 70% in the case of the Second Division teams are distributed equally among the participants in each category. This translates – if the Federation’s income from the broadcast is similar to that of previous editions – in a fixed income of 445,000 euros for each First Division club, regardless of the round in which they are eliminated.
The remaining amount is distributed in a variable way, and does so based on a ‘bonus’ for objectives and the performance of each team in recent seasons. This is stated in the same Royal Decree where only the entities that compete in the round of 16 in the last five editions of the cup tournament are taken into consideration, with the following weighting:
Round of 16: 2.5%Quarterfinals: 6%Semifinals: 9%Runner-up: 16%Finalist: 22%
If we review the income collected by the last champions of the competition, we can conclude that, for professional teams, the cup inflates prestige more than the coffers. Real Madrid, the current champion, received a prize of 1.21 million euros for lifting the trophy, while Osasuna received 1.06 million as runners-up. Bare figures when compared to titles like the League where the champion pockets 60 million or the Champions League, whose winner wins 100.
And how much do the most modest teams earn per round?
The loot is seen with different eyes from below. The modest teams that manage to advance several rounds in this competition have very attractive aid to clean up their accounts. This is where the ‘Impulso 27’ financial aid program comes into play, which the Federation allocates to benefit Second and Third RFEF clubs. In the case of the first, each team receives an aid of 40,000 euros for playing the first round and pockets 35,000 euros more for each round that advances, which rises to 45,000 if it has to travel to play the tie against another of the same team. category. For their part, those from Tercera (already eliminated) received 23,000 euros for playing the first match and 35,000 for each round they advanced.