Clubs due financial boost thanks to bumper TV payout

The bumper new overseas television deals will see top-flight clubs earning on average nearly £5m more a year than last season.

Although the Premier League have never confirmed the overall value of the overseas TV rights, it can now be calculated that they have doubled from £625m during 2007-10 to around £1.2bn over the next three seasons. That sum is about 10 times the amount Germany’s Bundesliga receives for foreign TV rights, five times what Italy receives and three times the amount Spain’s La Liga earns.

The Premier League also has the most equitable distribution of the major European leagues – it has the smallest difference between the champions and the bottom club in terms of the split of TV money.

England’s top club will earn less than double that of the bottom club from TV money, around 1.6 times as much.

By contrast, in Spain where TV rights are negotiated on a club-by-club basis Real Madrid and Barcelona earn 19 times more than the smallest clubs in La Liga.

The Premier League distributes TV rights money based partly on performance, partly via equal shares of TV income, and partly on the number of times a club’s matches are screened live on domestic television.

This season, each club will receive £13.8m as the equal share of domestic TV rights and £17.7m as the equal share of overseas TV rights.

On top of that, every place in the Premier League table is worth £752,000 – the bottom club will get that amount and the top club £15.04m.

Facility fees of £485,000 are paid to a club every time they play in a live TV match – with a minimum income of £4.85m even if a club has been involved in fewer than 10 live games.

The top four clubs usually play in at least 20 live TV games a season, meaning they will earn around £10m in facility fees.

The Premier League will also pay out £16m each in parachute payments to the three relegated clubs.

n Football Association chiefs are considering whether to axe funding to three of Africa’s poorest countries after a review of overseas projects following England’s failed 2018 World Cup bid.

An FA board meeting will next week decide the budget and strategy for international development, with high-profile relationships with Malawi, Lesotho and Botswana under threat.

The FA decided to review their international projects after the 2018 debacle last year where England won just two FIFA votes – one of those from English vice-president Geoff Thompson.

Walter Nyamilandu, head of the Malawi FA, said all the FA assistance had been cancelled.

He said: “They [England] are saying that they are reviewing their support towards development of football in the light of the poor support they received during the 2018 World Cup bid.

“According to the FA, they took the decision because they felt FIFA was not recognising the support they were giving to the game of football.”