Champions League Betting Offers & Free Bets For 2024/25

The Champions League, formally the European Cup, is the flagship tournament in European club football. Organised by UEFA, the top teams from across the continent compete each season for one of football’s most prestigious prizes.

From the first qualifying stages in June, the tournament progresses through the league stage, the two-legged knockout rounds and comes down to the final showdown, a one-off match with the winner decided on the night.

The 33rd tournament since the renaming of the competition, the 70th in total, takes place in 2024/25. As one of the most anticipated betting events of the year to date, there’ll be a host of offers and promotions to take advantage of.

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Stats Articles

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• How Often Are Players Sent Off in Football?
• Who Are The Worst Champions League Teams?
• How Many Goals Are Scored on Average in Champions League Games?
• Which Country Has The Best Champions League Record?
• Which Teams Have Won The Double In English Football?

Champions League Schedule

• First qualifying round – 9th to 17th July 2024
• Second qualifying round – 23rd to 31st July 2024
• Third qualifying round – 6th to 13th August 2024
• Qualifying round play-offs – 20th to 28th August 2024
• League stage
  • Matchday 1 – 17th, 18th & 19th September 2024
  • Matchday 2 – 1st & 2nd October 2024
  • Matchday 3 – 22nd & 23rd October 2024
  • Matchday 4 – 5th & 6th November 2024
  • Matchday 5 – 26th & 27th November 2024
  • Matchday 6 – 10th & 11th December 2024
  • Matchday 7 – 21st & 22nd January 2024
  • Matchday 8 – 29th January 2024
• Knockout round play-offs
  • 1st leg – 11th & 12th February 2025
  • 2nd leg – 18th & 19th February 2025
• Round of 16
  • 1st leg – 4th & 5th March 2025
  • 2nd leg – 11th & 12th March 2025
• Quarter-finals
  • 1st leg – 8th & 9th April 2025
  • 2nd leg – 15th & 16th April 2025
• Semi-finals
  • 1st leg – 29th & 30th April 2025
  • 2nd leg – 6th & 7th May 2025
• Final – Saturday 31st May 2024, kick-off 20:00

About the Champions League

The Champions League is run by the Union of European Football Associations, which is better known as UEFA. It was inaugurated in 1955 as the European Cup, earning the moniker of the Champions League in 1992. It’s widely regarded as the most prestigious club completion in the world, inviting teams from the top divisions around Europe to take part. This is underlined by the fact that the Champions League final is the most watched annual sporting event in the world, even surpassing the Superbowl to put it into context.

The Champions League as we know it not only gained a change of name back in 1992 but also saw its current format introduced. Even so, the records and statistics were carried over from its time as the European Cup as essentially it was just a rebranding that occurred.

The Creation of the European Cup in 1955

The first tournament of the European Cup kicked-off in 1955 and sixteen teams were represented, including the likes of Anderlecht, Hibernian, PSV Eindhoven, Real Madid and Stade de Reims. Real Madrid were the first winners of the tournament, running out 4-3 victors over Stade de Reims and sparking what would be their dominance in the competition over the next sixty years and more. There’s far more to tell you about than that, of course, starting with where the idea for such a contest came from.

The notion of having a pan-European competition had been in the pipeline almost from the first moment that a football was kicked in a competitive game. It came to life when the Challenge Cup was created in 1897 and saw teams from across the Austro-Hungarian Empire go head-to-head. That was a very specific tournament, obviously, but it led to the formation of the Mitropa Cup in 1927, which pitted central European teams up against each other. Three years after that the Swiss side Servette organised the Coupe des Nations, which was intended to see the national champions of European leagues compete to see which was the strongest at the end of each season. Ten teams took part in the first one, with the Hungarian side Újpest running out as winners.

Somewhat fascinatingly, it was actually the English side Wolverhampton Wanderers who were in part responsible for the tournament that would later become the European Cup. Having heard from journalists about the success of the 1948 Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones, the editor of the French sports paper L’Équipe campaigned to UEFA that there should be a European version. These campaigns were bolstered by the claims of the Wolves manager Stan Cullis, who declared his team to be the ‘Champions of the World’ after they’d won a few friendlies against big European sides in the 1950s. UEFA decided in Paris in 1955 to create a tournament that would be known as the Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens, or European Champion Clubs’ Cup.

The Early Tournaments

The first ever match in the newly formed competition took place on the 4th of September in 1955, with Sporting CP and Partizan fighting out an entertaining 3-3 draw. The teams were battling for the chance to take part in the final at the Parc des Princes, with Real Madrid and Stade de Reims earning the honour.

It was the Spanish side that claimed victory, having to come from behind to do so. It was to be the start of a love affair between the Spaniards and the competition that would see them go on to win the trophy more times than any other side by quite some distance. They started that particular journey by defending the title the following season, playing the final at their own home ground of the Santiago Bernabéu.

Real won the first five iterations of the competition, culminating in a 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt at Hampden Park in the 1960 final that remains the highest scoring final in the tournament’s history. A shock was in store for them the following year when their bitter Spanish rivals Barcelona knocked them out in the first round, meaning that Los Blancos wouldn’t win the competition for the first time since its formation. To make matters worse for Real, they couldn’t even say that they lost to the eventual winners as Barca were beaten 3-2 by Benfica in the final at the Wankdorf Stadium.

Benfica dreamt of being able to repeat Madrid’s period of domination and they retained their title the following year by beating the Spanish side 5-3 at Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium. They even reached the final the following season but lost 2-1 to AC Milan, seeing the trophy leave the Iberian Peninsula for the first time and head to Italian shores. It remained not only in Italy but also in the same city the year after when Milan’s neighbours Internazionale beat Real 3-1. The 1964-1965 season’s final was in Inter’s home stadium of the San Siro, so it was only right that they defeated Benfica 1-0 to retain the trophy and ensure a hat-trick of years of the trophy being in Milan.

The Formation of the Champions League in 1992

The European Cup remained much the same for the following few decades, with slight tweaks to the way it worked taking place every now and again. It wasn’t until the start of the 1990s that UEFA decided to mix things up in a big way, asking their commercial partner Television Entertainment and Media Marketing to rebrand the competition. As a result TEAM came up with an anthem, a new colour scheme and a logo that would be become recognisable all over world.

The decision was also made to change the way that the competition worked in terms of the teams invited to enter it. It was no longer restricted to the champions from each nation with a strong enough coefficient to take part in it, but instead was broadened to include teams that had done well in those domestic leagues without necessarily winning them.

Qualification & Stages

Qualifying for the Champions League is actually quite an arduous process. There are 36 teams in total that can participate in the tournament proper and each European associate nation will be allocated a certain number of entries for the competition. For example, in England the ranking of the country currently allows for the top four placed teams in the Premier League to automatically gain entry into the tournament proper. Other European nations have different coefficients and therefore a different number of teams that are allowed a place in the competition.

There are four qualifying rounds in total, including the playoff round. The coefficient ranking of each team will dictate what stage they are entered into the draw. Obviously, teams progressing from previous rounds will move forward, but new teams will be added at each stage of qualifying in order to whittle it down to the final seven teams who will move on to league stage. In the league stage, they join 29 teams who had automatically qualified to make a total of 36 teams.

The league was introduced from the 2024/25 season in a shake up to the previous group stage format which had been in place since 2003/04, with various other group stage formats dating back to 1991/92. Prior to this the European Cup was a knockout tournament. Before the 2024/25 campaign, 32 teams were split into eight groups of four, with the top two in each group going through to the round of 16, the third-place team dropping into the Europa League playoff and the fourth placed side eliminated.

The league phase now has teams split into four pots of nine, from the top seeds in pot 1, down to the fourth seeds in pot 4. In terms of how the seeding is decided, UEFA seem to change it on a yearly basis. For that reason we’re not going to go into too much detail here, except to say that the likes of a team’s performance in their domestic league as well as in the competition itself in the past tends to dictate a team’s seeding. Teams will then be drawn to play two teams from each pot, a total of eight matches against eight different teams, rather than playing an opponent once at home and once away. Each side will have a home and away game from each of the four pots. The previous country protection rule remains in place to an extent, but countries with four sides could play one team from the same country.

Once all matches have been played, the top eight teams from the 36-team league table will go straight to the round of 16. Teams in positions 9 to 24 will be drawn together in a knockout playoff round with home and away legs. Teams 25 to 36 are eliminated, and sides will no longer drop down into the Europa League at any stage.

For all knockout games, teams play each other twice, both home and away. The away goals rule no longer counts so if the scores are level at the end of the second leg then firstly extra-time and then penalties might be required to decide a winner. The eight teams winning the playoff will face the eight automatic qualifiers in the round of 16. From this point on the tournament is a straight knockout. It’s worth pointing out that in previous seasons, country protection remained in place until the quarter finals but now there is no country protection at all after the league stage. The final is played on a neutral ground that is decided well before the start of each season and is just one game. Extra-time and penalties can again come into play if the scores are level at full-time.

Famous Finals

The Champions League is a competition that lends itself to excitement and intrigue. The stakes are massive, with many considering the tournament to be the peak of a club side’s exploits over the course of the season. In terms of major trophies, it is thought of in the same way as a domestic league. Consequently, there have been some truly fascinating and thrilling contests over the years, both in the group stage and the knockout rounds. Here’s a look at some of the most famous finals that the European Cup and Champions League has ever witnessed.

Celtic’s Lisbon Lions – 1967

Very few people in football gave Celtic a chance of winning the European Cup when they reached the final in 1967. It was taking place in the Portuguese city of Lisbon at the Estádio Nacional and the Scottish side’s opponents were Internazionale, the Italian side that had won the competition two years running in 1964 and 1965.

Given that the Scots hadn’t played in a European Cup final before, many thought that the odds on them winning were as good as nought when Sandro Mazzola converted a penalty for Inter after just seven minutes. The Scottish side never knew when they’re beaten however, and goals from Tommy Gemmell and Stevie Chalmers gave Jock Stein’s men a 2-1 win and saw them immortalised as the Lisbon Lions forever more.

Bayern Batter Atletico In A Replay – 1974

Nowadays penalties help to decide a drawn game, but that wasn’t the case back in the mid 1970s when replays were needed to decide a winner if one couldn’t be found after extra-time. That’s what happened when Bayern Munich went up against Atletico Madrid in 1974 and the Spanish team scored a goal in extra-time that seemed likely to hand them the win. Instead Bayern equalised with practically the last kick of the game, and so a replay took place two days later.

If the first game had suggested that it was likely to be a tight affair then no one told that to the Germans, who ran out 4-0 winners. They celebrated so much that they lost their league game the next day 5-0.

Liverpool and Juventus Witness Tragedy in Heysel – 1985

Away from the success and excitement of other Champions League finals comes this tragic moment in 1985, when Liverpool and Juventus went up against each other at Heysel Stadium. Both clubs had complained to UEFA that the venue wasn’t fit for purpose ahead of the match, but the competition’s governing body ignored the warnings. Worse, they allowed one section of the stands to be a ‘neutral’ zone, with both Liverpool and Juventus fans managing to get tickets.

The stadium was already crumbling ahead of kick-off, so when Liverpool supporters charged at Juventus fans in the neutral area and the Italians backed away the ground wasn’t strong enough to cope with the pressure and a wall collapsed. People attempted to flee and thirty-nine supporters died. As a result, Liverpool fans were charged with manslaughter and English clubs were banned from European competition for five years.

Manchester United’s Two Minute Turnaround – 1999

In England everyone was very much used to the idea of ‘Fergie Time’ when Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United team went up against Bayern Munich in the 1999 final. That news mightn’t have spread to the Bundesliga however, with the German team feeling that they had the trophy tied up after taking a six minute lead, even when they conceded a corner at the dying moments of the match.

There would be three minutes of stoppage time and the second the board went up to show as much the ball fell to Teddy Sheringham and he equalised. Bayern must’ve thought they could win it in extra-time, but they still shouldn’t have conceded another corner almost directly from their own kick-off. Concede they did though, and Ole Gunnar Solskjær scored to give the Red Devils the famous win.

Liverpool’s Miracle in Istanbul – 2005

Liverpool’s league form under new manager Rafa Benitez had been pretty poor in the 2004-2005 campaign, but the Spaniard was still able to mastermind a trip for the Reds to the final of the Champions League at Istanbul’s Attaturk Stadium.

They conceded after just a minute, though, and their dream turned to a nightmare as AC Milan took a 3-0 lead into half-time. The Italians were one of the best defensive teams in the world at that point, so nobody gave the Merseyside club any hope of getting back into the match.

They were wrong to dismiss the notion of Scouse defiance, however, and three goals in six minutes saw them level and the game go into extra-time. Some gravity defying stops from the goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek as well as some antics during the penalty shoot-out saw Liverpool win the trophy for the fifth time and the match itself declared the greatest Champions League final ever.

Interesting Facts

The winning team is presented with the Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens, which has had the same design each year since 1967, making it one of the oldest of its kind. In the past, any team that managed to win the tournament either three times in a row or five times overall were able to keep the trophy forever and a new one was created for the following season. That rule changed in 2009 and now the winners simply get a replica with the club’s name engraved on it.

The Champions League is often referred to as the most lucrative cup completion in world football. The prize money is broken down between equal share payouts and performance related payouts, with around €18 million for any team reaching the league stage. A win in the league stage earns the club €2.1 million, with €700k for a draw. Each position in the league table is worth €275k, so the 36th team will get the base €275k, with almost €10 million for first place. There are also other bonuses added for teams in the top 8, and for those qualifying for the playoffs. Winning the tournament and all their games in the league stage leads to a maximum payout of around €92 million.

Real Madrid are the most successful team in the tournament’s history, winning it 15 times to date. Ironically, their neighbours Atletico Madrid are arguably the unluckiest side in the competition thanks to their three appearances in the final without a win. As a sign of Real’s dominance. The second best team in the competition’s history is AC Milan, who have won the trophy seven times. Liverpool and Bayern Munich have both won it six times, with Barcelona on five then Ajax coming next on the list thanks to their four victories.

Here’s a list of some other facts that you might enjoy:

• Six teams boast a 100% success rate in terms of final appearances and trophy wins: Nottingham Forest, Porto, Feyenoord, Aston Villa, PSV Eindhoven, Red Star Belgrade
• The biggest win at any stage of the competition came in 1973 when Dinamo București beat Crusaders 11-0
• Arsenal are yet to win the tournament but hold the record for the longest period of time without conceding: 995 minutes
• Bayern Munich have managed the most consecutive home wins in the competition, winning sixteen times in a row between September 2014 and February 2017
• Bayern Munich also became the first team to win the Champions League with a 100% record, winning 11 out of 11 in 2019/20
• At the time of writing Cristiano Ronaldo holds the record for the most appearances in the competition with 183
• Cristiano Ronaldo has also scored the most Champions League goals with 140 up until the end of the 2023/24 tournament
• The record at the time of writing for the most assists in a single campaign was achieved by both Luis Figo in 1999/2000 and James Milner in the 2017-2018 season with 9
• Sergio Ramos, Edgar Davids and Zlatan Ibrahimović have all been sent of in four different Champions League games – more than any other players
• Carlo Ancelotti has won the most game’s in the competition’s history with 116 victories, ahead of Pep Guardiola with 109 and Sir Alex Ferguson with 107
• Carlo Ancelotti has also won the trophy five times, ahead of Pep Guardiola, Zinedine Zidane and Bob Paisley who lifted the trophy three times