Recognised as one of the premier leagues in Europe, teams in La Liga get to split over £1 billion between them each season, but this split is far from being even.
Merit and popularity weigh heavily on the final payouts, even with the base reward for competing in the league guaranteeing nearly £30 million to each club.
So, here’s a look at how the La Liga prize money pool is distributed and how it’s improved from the arrangements of only a decade ago.
How Much La Liga Prize Money Does the Winner Get?
The amount of La Liga prize money that the winner gets each season varies because of how the pool of cash is split up. While £28.25 million is guaranteed to all, two other elements vary.
A quarter of the prize money depends on team popularity and commercial impact, which can be very significant to the final payouts.
Essentially, if one of the teams outside of the big three or four wins the title, their La Liga prize money could still be less than the likes of Real Madrid or Barcelona, who run out the highest-paid players in the league and are the biggest draws commercially.
Even so, the winnings available are rather hefty. In 2024/25, when Barcelona pulled through in the football odds to win La Liga, they took home €57.84 million (£50.44m). Real Madrid, in second, secured €51.03 million (£44.42m).
Compared to how the cash is split, as well as the sheer amount on offer, while a respected and thrilling league, it’s easy to see how Premier League prize money distribution helps to put it ahead of its Spanish counterpart as an overall product.
How is the La Liga Prize Money Split Between Teams?
The La Liga prize money split is based on a calculation of even split, league position merit, and popularity merit, which splits the roughly £1.13 billion (€1.3bn) unevenly between the clubs.
Half of this sum (£565m) is given out evenly to each of the 20 teams. This grants each club a flat rate of £28.25 million in guaranteed La Liga prize money.
From there, 25 per cent (£282.5m) is split out as merit payments based on the final league finishing position of each team. The other 25 per cent is paid based on how popular each team is and their commercial impact on the league.
This final quarter of the La Liga prize money pool and how it’s distributed harkens back to the old ways of the league’s rights distribution, and is levied this way to essentially make sure that Real Madrid and Barcelona didn’t lose too much after a new deal was struck.
It’s greatly because of this that the two Spanish giants have been able to retain and stranglehold on the title and remain the perpetual favourites in the La Liga odds.
How Did La Liga Prize Money Distribution Work Before?
Prior to 2016, La Liga clubs operated under a “rights of arena” agreement, which allowed each team to negotiate their own TV contracts. Naturally, this earned the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid a lot more money.
Of the total sum of TV rights sold in 2014/15 in La Liga, Real Madrid and Barcelona took 21 per cent each, or 42 per cent of the total pie between them.
Under the new rules, as 2021/22 figures revealed, they still take a hefty chunk, but now it’s around 11 per cent each. Even with this being the case, their share of the TV money that season still produced about as much revenue as before the reforms.
Enabling teams to settle a quarter of the total La Liga prize money pool based on popularity has kept their big two ahead of the rest in terms of finances and success, helping to bring in the biggest stars of the sport.
It’s certainly a fairer and more evenly distributed method of sorting out the La Liga prize money, but being more popular already enables further earnings beyond the league structure, only widening the financial gap once again.
