As the curtains were drawn a fortnight ago on another eventful football season in the English Premier League, which undoubtedly didn’t for once fail to live up to its usual expectation of twists, turns and controversy, all 20 sides that slugged it out from the blast of the whistle and first kick of the ball in August 2023 will be banking at most minuscule a humongous £100m from the sport’s richest league as Premier League prize money— a worthy award for their travails over the past ten months.
The English Premier League is without a doubt the biggest, most exciting and wealthiest in the world, thanks to its renowned high-quality football style and economic stability which is why some of the biggest names in the sport— both players and coaches compete in the league thereby attracting millions of viewers worldwide, and suffice it to say that it shouldn’t be a big surprise to learn that clubs from up and down the country will once more earn vast sums of money this season.
The league itself, as of January 2023, was estimated to be worth around $17.9 billion, according to sportsbrief.com, thanks to factors such as broadcast rights, sponsorship deals, and the overall financial performance of the competition that raises this valuation, and in an era of PSR, FSR or any other confusing financial acronyms, every quid counts for these football league to attain this value.
It distributes hundreds of millions of pounds to teams as part of its club revenue distribution. It is so extensive that even the relegated clubs always walk away with amounts more significant than title-winning clubs in other leagues in Europe and around the globe.
This is why a club like Sheffield United, who just produced one of the worst season performances in Premier League history, should bank a nine-figure sum despite crashing to the bottom of the pack and conceding more than a century of goals, a wonder that is mainly down to the Premier League’s incomparable global broadcast revenue.
Last season, Premier League clubs altogether received a total of £2.78billion for the campaign, which is comprised of six varied payments through the division’s ‘central revenue system’, a model the Premier League says ‘ensures the most equitable distribution of funds of any major European league’.
Manchester City received a whopping record £176.2m as champions with the most games televised live in the UK, while Southampton received £103.6m for their efforts in finishing bottom and getting relegated.
The Premier League’s disbursement of hundreds of millions of pounds to teams as part of its club revenue distribution does come with a certain fixed amount, with clubs carting an ‘equal share’ of the league’s income from its domestic and international broadcast deals. These TV rights deals are lucrative for a reason, suppose I should take you back to last season— 2022-23, each of the twenty Premier League team’s equal share worked out at £31.2 million ($39.1 million) for the UK broadcast deal and £48 million for the international agreement. These teams also banked £9.4m for their cut of the commercial payments, meaning clubs were guaranteed £88.6million, irrespective of where they finished on the league table.
But here’s another interesting twist: another big difference comes in merit payments. It is awarded on a sliding scale and is the only other part of the prize money which is not fixed but based on facilities and how many times each club has been selected for television and on each club’s finishing position.
In 2022/23, Manchester City had 29 games televised live in the UK, for which they received £25.3m in facility fees. Arsenal and Liverpool both had 28 matches and were paid £24.5m.
It might interest you to know that these numbers increase each time a club is picked for a televised fixture in the UK — where not all games can be shown live due to the 3 pm blackout rule, which is known as a ‘facility fee’ although this does not correlate to a team’s final position in the table, take an example: in 2022-23, Everton, which finished the season 17th-place, earned more in facility fees (£19.4m) than fifth-placed Brighton & Hove Albion (£14.4m) as they were on TV in the UK more times (22 vs 16).
Aside from winning the title, avoiding relegation, and qualifying for European night football, a lot is also at stake per place in the Premier League. That is why teams really need to battle it out to get that all important match day result on every week.
In the season just ended, Manchurian giants Manchester City, led by their Spanish gaffer Pep Guardiola, once again did reign supreme by emerging as champions for the fourth straight season, having keenly contested with runners-up Arsenal and England juggernauts Liverpool in what was tagged a three-horse race and a first of its kind.
Manchester City will end up earning more than the £170m it received last season alongside the glory and silverware before factoring in the riches of reaching the Champions League, which can hit another £100m to clubs depending on their performance in the following season. And the merit payments also mean clubs who have been mired in the mid-table morass for several weeks should not have had their heads warped on the beach.
Below is a breakdown of how much each team will first likely earn this season in end-of-season position merit money thanks to data collected by The Athletic,
1. Champions, Manchester City
2. Season runners up, Arsenal
3. Merseyside giants, Liverpool
4. Aston Villa who just clinched a top 4 spot after several decades
5. Tottenham Hotspur
6. Chelsea
7. Tyneside giants, Newcastle
8. Red Devils, Manchester United
9. West Ham
10. Crystal Palace
11. Brighton
12. Bournemouth
13. Fulham
14. Wolves
15. Merseysiders, Everton
16. Brentford
17. Nottingham Forest
18. Luton Town
19. Burnley
20. Sheffield United
With the importance of abiding by the rules of Financial Fair Play, every quid is really important in the Premier League, and even though the Premier League doesn’t release its total club disbursement figures until later in the year after the season has finished.
For example, the 2021-22 season figures came on July 1, 2022, and last season’s data were not fully published until February 2024. But what’s for certain is that clubs in the Premier League this season will be carting away prize sums of money of almost £80m in share payments - an apparent dividend from the billions made from global TV deals - and that is topped up by an essential commercial figure of just under £10m. Clubs will also receive a facility fee of approximately £900,000 for every game they play live on UK TV.
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