The German Football League (DFL) has received €7.91 million in solidarity payments from UEFA for non-participating clubs in the Champions League and Europa League, more than €1m less than the previous season.
Every season UEFA makes solidarity payments to non-participating clubs in the association's two club competitions, the Europa League and Champions League. The payments represent five percent of the overall gross revenues of the two competitions.
With a new three-year cycle kicking in last term, UEFA introduced a new distribution system, no longer entirely focusing on the value of the TV market of each of the 55 national associations.
From the 2015-16 season onwards, "60 percent of the available amounts are distributed in equal shares among all national associations and/or leagues and 40 percent are distributed according to the value of the TV market of each respective association in the UEFA Champions League," UEFA said on their website.
Last term, a total of €120.83m was distributed to all national leagues and/or associations. The DFL, which traditionally hands down the payments to the 18 clubs of the second tier, received €7.91m, around €1.2 less to the €9.08m payments received in 2014-15 when a total of only €85.02m was distributed, kicker reported.
Smaller associations, on the other hand, saw a huge increase in solidarity payments with the Danish FA receiving €1.97m instead of €590,000 the previous term.
From the 2018-19 season on, the Champions League will also limit the influence of the value of the TV markets and will base their revenue distribution on a four pillar system also consisting of payments for a newly introduced coefficient system also based on past successes in the European competitions.