Arsenal has become the first club to break the £100m (€127.2m/$144.1m) barrier in revenue received from the English Premier League.
The club earned more from central income payments delivered by the league in the 2015-16 season than champions Leicester City.
The revenue distributed to clubs includes income generated from the sale of central broadcasting rights, both UK and international, and other central commercial rights.
The Premier League’s system for distributing revenue sees 50 per cent of UK broadcast revenue split equally between the 20 clubs, which amounted to £21,924,800 per team in 2015-16. Twenty-five per cent of UK broadcast revenue is paid in merit payments based on a team’s finishing position in the table.
Twenty-five per cent of UK broadcast revenue is paid in facility fees each time a club’s matches are broadcast in the UK. All international broadcast revenue, and central commercial revenue, is split equally among the 20 clubs. The former figure amounted to £29,415,848 per club for 2015-16.
Arsenal topped the table with a payment of £100,952,257, followed by Manchester City (£96,971,603), Manchester United (£96,477,120), Tottenham Hotspur (£95,222,320) and Leicester (£93,219,598). Aston Villa, which finished bottom of the table and was relegated, secured £66,622,215.
Arsenal’s payment consisted of almost £21.5m in facility fees after being shown on television 27 times in the UK last season. Leicester, by contrast, gained just over £12.5m through this payment after being shown only 15 times.
The Premier League divided a total pot of £1,638,805,918 amongst its teams last season, with this figure set to rise substantially from 2016-17.
The Premier League has awarded live domestic rights over three years, from 2016-17 to 2018-19, to UK pay-television broadcasters Sky and BT Sport for a total of £5.14bn. The Premier League’s rights over the next window are set to be worth around £8.3bn in total with overseas deals included.
The Premier League’s 2014-15 champion Chelsea received top billing in last year’s figures. Its total share of £98,999,554 was just over £34m more than bottom earners Queens Park Rangers, which gained £64,886,028.