UEFA to open 2027/28 Champions League with standalone holders' match

What UEFA approved

From 2027/28, the Champions League league phase will begin with a standalone Tuesday night match at the home of the reigning champions. No other match is scheduled for that Tuesday. The rest of the opening matchday moves to Wednesday and Thursday. UEFA officials said the aim is to increase visibility for all competing clubs, Yahoo Sports reported.

The model follows U.S. sports. The NFL opens its season with the previous Super Bowl champion playing alone on a Thursday night. Yahoo Sport Australia reported that had the rule already been in place, Paris Saint-Germain's home match would have been the first game of the season.

The commercial strategy behind it

UC3 is the exclusive rights manager for UEFA's club competitions, owned by UEFA and European Football Clubs, formerly the European Club Association. It announced a six-year commercial strategy running from 2027/28 through 2032/33. UC3 said it would go to market imminently with a media, sponsorship and licensing rights strategy for the post-2027 cycle. Yahoo Sport Australia reported the next cycle could fetch $5.9 billion or more.

UC3 and Relevent Football Partners will build on a partner portfolio that spans the Champions League, Europa League, Conference League, Super Cup, Youth League and Futsal Champions League. UC3 said details of new sponsorship and licensing packages will be announced at a later date.

Rights to the club competitions were previously overseen by UEFA itself. The UC3 structure is designed to give participating teams a greater say in how they are commercialised, SportsPro reported. The expanded format delivered €4.4 billion in club competition revenue in its first year. Relevent Sports had guaranteed UEFA US$250 million per season for the US broadcast remit in the 2024 to 2027 cycle. UC3 then gave the company a global sales brief for the next six-year cycle, ending Team Marketing's run selling the rights since 1991.

Charlie Marshall, EFC chief executive and a UC3 co-managing director, said the new approach enables 'more risks to be taken' and decisions that 'don't simply default to the status quo'.

What the expanded format looks like

Since 2024/25 the league phase has 36 teams, each playing eight matches against eight different opponents. That is up from six games against three teams in the old group stage. The 36-team table produces 144 league-phase matches, against 48 unique home-and-away fixtures under the old format, Yahoo Sports reported.

UEFA deputy secretary general Giorgio Marchetti said at the Portugal Football Summit that the average coefficient gap between clubs is now 11 points. He said the new format had brought more balance and unpredictability. The change to the opener adds no matches; it spreads the opening week across three days.

What happens next

The format change takes effect from 2027/28, when the first standalone opener will be played at the holders' ground.