HAMBURG: UEFA said Saturday it will pay 331 million euros ($360 million) in total prize money to the 24 national teams at the men´s European Championship that is expected to earn about 2.4 billion euros ($2.61 billion) in commercial revenue. The team prize fund is in line with the pandemic-delayed Euro 2020 and 20 times more than UEFA’s prize fund for the women´s Euro 2022. The national federation of the Euro 2024 title winner can get a maximum of 28.25 million euros if the team wins all three games in the opening group stage, the European soccer body said ahead of the tournament draw. Each of the 24 teams gets a minimum of 9.25 million euros for playing at the month-long tournament in Germany that starts June 14. Clubs will share in a further 240 million euros from UEFA for releasing their players to national-team duty. They get a daily rate of several thousand euros per player while they are with national teams for qualifying games and at Euro 2024 itself. FIFA paid prize money of $440 million to the 32 men´s teams at the 2022 World Cup, four times more than the $110 million shared among 32 women´s teams at their 2023 World Cup. The Euro 2024 winner will be paid more than the total 16 million euros prize money fund for the 16 women´s teams that played at Euro 2022 in England. The women´s event has separate commercial deals to the men´s. England won its home women´s tournament last year and got just over 2 million euros in prize money. UEFA´s fund to reward women´s clubs for releasing players was 4.5 million euros. UEFA previously said it allocated 140 million euros to be shared by clubs releasing more than 550 players needed for the Euro 2024 tournament. The remaining 100 million euros in the player release fund is distributed according to call-ups for all national teams for qualifying games and two editions of the Nations League. The UEFA fund for men´s player release from Euro 2020 revenue was 200 million euros in total and nearly 700 clubs got a share. Chelsea´s 5.1 million euros payment was the highest. Women’s Champions League: The Women’s Champions League will undergo a significant reshaping of its group stage from the 2025-26 season while a second-tier competition will be launched, UEFA said on Saturday as it announced sweeping changes to European women’s football. The decisions were agreed at UEFA’s Executive Committee’s meeting in Hamburg, Germany. “The UEFA Executive Committee approved a new format for the UEFA Women’s Champions League, consisting of an 18-team league phase with three home and three away matches followed by knock-out rounds,” UEFA said in a statement. Europe’s soccer governing body added that its Executive Committee had also approved “the creation of a second European competition for women’s clubs, with the changes becoming effective as of the 2025/26 season.” UEFA said it would provide further details about the competitions on Dec. 4. The format of the Women’s Champions League has attracted criticism in recent months. In its current format, the Women’s Champions League features a 16-team group stage, for which only four teams qualify directly by winning their respective domestic leagues. The remaining teams compete in a play-off system to qualify for the group stage, which often leads to early exits for Europe’s biggest sides, with Arsenal and Wolfsburg suffering that fate this season. PRIZE MONEY: UEFA also announced the prize money for next year’s men’s European Championships in Germany, in which the winner will collect an extra payout of eight million euros ($8.70 million) on top of their participation fee of 9.25 million euros. Teams will also receive a match bonus of one million euros for wins and 500,000 euros for draws. There will be further rewards for teams that qualify for the round of 16, quarter-finals and semi-finals. “The amount for distribution to the participating teams is confirmed at the same level as for … Euro 2020, i.e. a total of 331 million euros,” UEFA said. “The maximum amount that the champion team may achieve, if they will have won all three of their group matches, is 28.25 million euros.”