Under a financial point of view which is better for a low-intermediate club, to go to the Champions or Europa League?

Question

If a low-intermediate club depends only of itself on its last game to finish on 4th or 5th on its Major National European League, which one would be the better option, considering a financial point of view:

1. Finish 4th and go to Champions League, even though knowing that they will probably lose all their games on this league; or

2. Finish 5th and go to Europa League, where they can probably have good results and advance maybe to the semi or finals?

Please note that this case is different than For an average Champions League team, is it financially more worth it to go through to knockout stages or drop down in to Europa League?

Answer 1

Champions League.

According to this source entering CL group stage alone was worth $17.74 million (~16.8 million €) in 2022. The same source also lists the prize money for the Europa League.

In order to win that much money a club has to reach the Europa League final. Winning every game up to semi finals is worth $16.18 million (~15.35 million €) and therefore still less than just being in the CL group stage. Only if they reached the final they would exceed the amount of the guaranteed CL prize money with up to $21.2 million for the runner up and about $4.5 million more for the winner.