Thanks to a 3-0 home victory on Saturday, BVB has secured qualification for the 2025/26 UEFA Champions League (UCL) on the last matchday of the season.
From the perspective of before this matchday, that was certainly not a surprise. In March, however, BVB were still 10 points behind 4th place after a 2-0 defeat in Leipzig, leading us to put only a 10% likelihood on the club's UCL hopes. However, following a superb winning streak with 7 victories out of the last 8 Bundesliga matches, where the only draw was a 2-2 at Bayern, BVB jumped from 11th to 4th place.
Why is this so important? The UCL is the most competitive club competition in the world and therefore UEFA's flagship event, leading to correspondingly high prize money. In fact, while the overall prize money in the UCL is € 2.44bn, it is only € 565 in the UEFA Europa League (UEL) and only € 285m in the UEFA Conference League (UECL). According to our calculations and forecasts, BVB will be able to achieve € 78m in UCL related TV marketing sales next season. In contrast, this figures would have been at € 23m in the UEL and at € 14m in the UECL and of course at € 0 when failing entirely to qualify for a European competition.
UCL qualification was thus crucial for the club and does now open up significant opportunities on the transfer market in our view. Combined with potential departures of talented players like Jamie Gittens (€ 50m market value) or Nico Schlotterbeck (€ 40m), the club will receive an estimated $ 51m from participating in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, which takes place in the US during the summer.
In our view, management should be able to built a strong team around the already strong foundation of the squad with these funds, making us confident that in contrast to this season BVB will easily qualify for UCL in the coming season. A first step here was the permanent signing of defender Daniel Svensson, who has been on loan at the club since January. In 11 Bundesliga matches, he was able to produce solid stats including 2 assists and 1 goal.
Reiterate BUY with an unchanged € 5.20 PT based on DCF.
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