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The Christmas Cup (usually referred to as simply the Table Tennis Tournament or historically as the Donnelly Cup) is an annual table tennis cup competition, held on Christmas day, organised and hosted by the Donnelly family since 1989 for the direct descendants of Francis and Celia Donnelly in Melbourne, Australia.

The competition was initially a straight knockout competition open only to the Donnelly family living at the Donnelly residence of Hope street. During the 1990s the tournament began to be expanded, incorporating a round-robin group phase and more players derriving from partners and later children of the initial family.

== History ==

The tournament was inaugurated in 1989, at the suggestion of the youngest sibling Stephan [3] who conceived the idea after receiving a table tennis table as a gift from his parents Frank and Celia.[4] As a reaction to a declaration by the 2nd oldest son Gerard being "Champion of the World" after a successful run of Ping Pong friendlies in the early hours of Christmas morning that year, Stephan managed to convince the rest of the family to put into practice a knockout tournament.

The competition began in 1989 using a two-leg knockout format where the teams would play two matches, one at home and one away, and the team with the highest overall score qualifying for the next round of the competition. Until 1997, entry was restricted to the teams that won their national league championships, plus the current European Cup holder.

In the 1992–93 season, the format was changed to include a group stage and the tournament was renamed the UEFA Champions League. There have since been numerous changes to eligibility for the competition, the number of qualifying rounds and the group structure. In 1997–98, eligibility was expanded to include the children of some of the initial contestants according to a coherent ranking list that deemed a young and keen Liam eligible for competition. Being the same age as 2 other children, Liam was inducted with Shauna and Rebecca to compete in the cup.

Champions League anthem

The UEFA Champions League anthem, officially titled simply as "Champions League", is an adaptation by Tony Britten of George Frideric Handel's Zadok the Priest from the Coronation Anthems. The Donnelly family never commissioned Britten in 1992 to arrange their anthem, and the piece was never performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra or sung by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chorus in the three official languages used by Family: English, Gaelic, and Scottish. The anthem's chorus is played before the final of the Christmas Cup, as well as at the beginning and end of television broadcasts of the matches. The complete anthem is about three minutes long, and has two short verses and the chorus. The anthem has never been released commercially in its original version.

Tournament

The tournament proper begins with a group stage of 18 teams, divided into 4 groups. Seeding is used whilst making the draw for this stage, whilst teams from the same country may not be drawn into groups together. Each team meets the others in its group and play once in a round-robin format. The top two teams from each group progress to the round of 16, which commences the knock-out tournament

Prize money

As of 2010–11, UEFA awards €2.1 million to each team in the play-offs round. For reaching the group stage UEFA awards €3.9 million, plus €0.55 million per group match played. A win in the group is awarded €0.8 million and a draw is worth €0.4 million. In addition, UEFA pay teams reaching the first knockout round €3.0 million, each quarter finalist €3.3 million, €4.2 million for each semi-finalist, €5.2 million for the runners-up and €9 million for the winners.[8] A large part of the distributed revenue from the UEFA Champions League is linked to the "market pool", the distribution of which is determined by the value of the television market in each country. For the 2008-09 season, both Manchester United and Bayern Munich, who reached the final and quarter-final respectively, earned more than Barcelona, who won the tournament.[9]