UEFA Conference League Betting Odds

Understanding the New Conference League Format

UEFA has introduced a completely new format for all of its competitions, including the Conference League, and 2024/25 is the debut season. Having replaced the classic group stage format with a 'league phase', there are now 36 teams in the competition instead of 32. As such, there are also more games to play.

The qualification stage of the Conference League has stayed the same and since it can be a bit complicated, we recommend visiting the official UEFA Conference League website for more information. We will focus more on the league phase here since it's a significant change compared to the previous format.

In the league phase, 36 teams are battling it out and each of these play eight games against eight different opponents (home or away). The opponents are decided by the four ranking pots, with two teams drawn from each of these, to ensure that there is a good range in the quality of the opponents.

As for making it through to the knockout stage, which has remained unchanged, teams finishing in positions 1-8 qualify immediately. Those in positions 9-16 and 17-24, meanwhile, must square off in a knockout play-off tie (two legs). The former group of teams is 'seeded' in this draw and thus gets home advantage in the return leg.

All in all, this new format means that teams must play at least 8 games - but at most 10 - rather than 6 to qualify for the knockout phase. It should be noted that none of the eliminated Europa League sides will drop down to the Conference League either, as that rule has been scrapped across all three UEFA competitions.