Opta AI predicts Champions League winners 24/25

The 24/25 Champions League kicks off with a new format, but the question every fan is asking before kick-off remains the same: who will win the trophy this season?

There have been few surprises among the winners in recent years, mostly due to Real Madrid’s brutal dominance: Real Madrid, the record winner of the competition with 15 titles, have won a whopping six of the last eleven editions! Of course, last season’s BVB, but also Inter Milan (2023) and Tottenham Hotspur (2019) were finalists who were not necessarily expected to go so far before the start of the tournament, but the “modest” did not win.

Ahead of the 2024/25 season, Opta’s supercomputer played the Champions League a total of 10,000 times and made several predictions on each team’s chances of winning the Champions League or even surviving the league stage. You can see the results below.

There are two clear favourites in the Opta Supercomputer ahead of the start of the Premier League: Manchester City, who are given a probability of victory of over 25%, and reigning champions Real Madrid, who are given an 18.2% chance. They are followed by Inter Milan, with 10.9%, and FC Arsenal, with 6.3%.

Of the German teams, two-time champions Bayer Leverkusen have the best chance of winning the trophy with a 5.4% chance. This would obviously be the first win for the Werkself, who reached the Europa League final last season. FC Bayern have a 4.1% chance, while RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund each have 2.4% chances. VfB Stuttgart have just 0.6%.

The most surprising assessment is probably that of Liverpool FC, who at 4.2% have hardly any realistic chance of winning, even though the Reds looked excellent at the start of the season under new manager Arne Slot.

Opta’s supercomputer has not only calculated the chances of victory, but also the probability of progressing to the last 16. As a reminder, the top eight teams in the league phase automatically qualify for the round of 16, while teams ranked between ninth and twenty-fourth have to go through to a play-off round.

The format: the teams ranked ninth to 16th after the league phase will face the teams ranked 17th to 24th in a two-legged, head-to-head match to determine the remaining eight tickets to the round of 16.

The supercomputer’s odds show that the new format increases the chances of smaller teams in particular of reaching the knockout stage. Teams such as Girona and Eindhoven have a near 50% chance of reaching the last 16, while Sparta Prague (24.5%), Celtic Glasgow (21.1%) and Dinamo Zagreb (17.4%) can also dream.

Good news for the German clubs: Bayern, Leverkusen and Dortmund are all virtually guaranteed passage to the last 16 with over 70%, while Leipzig (63.5%) and Stuttgart (48.8%) at least have a good chance.