How Much Do You Get for Winning the Premier League? Every Payment
Arsenal received about £198.7m in central payments for winning the 2025/26 Premier League. Here is how equal shares, merit money and TV fees add up.
Winning the Premier League earned Arsenal approximately £198.7m in central payments for the 2025/26 season, against £117.7m for Wolves in 20th, according to The Athletic’s calculations as reported by Football365. About £75.2m of that came from finishing first. The title itself was worth one rung on the merit ladder: £3.76m, the difference between first and second place.
One caveat before the detail. The Premier League normally publishes its official payment table in the summer, but as of late September 2026 it had not released the 2025/26 version, so the figures below are The Athletic’s reconstruction. The most recent official table covers 2024/25, and both are shown here.
There is no cheque for the trophy
The league says so itself. Its guide to what Arsenal received for the 2025/26 title lists the trophy, 40 silver medals and a gold sleeve badge to wear the following season, and states plainly that there is no specific championship prize fund.
What people call “prize money” is the league’s central distribution of TV and sponsorship income. All 20 clubs are paid from the same pot by the same formula, and the champions sit at the top of a sliding scale. Roughly half of Arsenal’s £198.7m would have reached them even if they had finished bottom.
The silverware has its own story — its design, its weight and why two exist — but none of the money is attached to it.
Where Arsenal’s £198.7m came from
| Payment | How it is decided | Arsenal, 2025/26 |
|---|---|---|
| Equal share: UK TV | Identical for all 20 clubs | £31.9m |
| Equal share: overseas TV | Identical for all 20 clubs | £56.5m |
| Central commercial | Identical for all 20 clubs | £11.5m |
| Merit payment | Final league position | £75.2m |
| Facility fees | Number of live UK TV games (33) | £23.6m |
| Total | £198.7m |
The first three lines add up to roughly £99.9m, and every club gets it. Only two lines separate the champions from the side that finishes 20th: merit payments and facility fees.
Merit payments: one share per place
Merit money works as a ladder of 20 rungs. The bottom club receives one share, 19th receives two, and so on up to the champions, who receive 20. In 2025/26 one share was worth about £3.76m, combining UK and overseas TV money. Football365 notes that the step had never been above £3.1m before.
The overseas part has become the larger of the two. Newcastle, who finished 12th, received £15.4m in UK merit money and £18.4m from the overseas merit pool, as The Athletic’s breakdown shows. Under the system the league describes on its own site, existing overseas income is shared equally, while any growth on top of it is paid out by league position.
Facility fees: paid for being on television
The league’s published formula splits UK broadcast money 50% equal share, 25% merit and 25% facility fees, which reward clubs each time a match is picked for live UK coverage. Arsenal were shown 33 times and earned £23.6m. Manchester United, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest were shown 34 times each; Burnley were picked only 17 times and received £10.7m.
A live match is worth roughly £0.7m, though fixtures moved for European commitments pay less than games picked in advance. The current £6.7bn UK rights deal, which started in 2025/26, puts every match outside the Saturday 3pm blackout on television, so facility fees now reach well down the table.
What each place was worth in 2025/26
| Position | Club | Merit payment | Total central payment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | £75.2m | £198.7m |
| 2 | Manchester City | £71.44m | £192.5m |
| 3 | Manchester United | £67.68m | £191.5m |
| 5 | Liverpool | £60.16m | £181.8m |
| 7 | Sunderland | £52.64m | £168.2m |
| 10 | Chelsea | £41.36m | £162.6m |
| 17 | Tottenham | £15.04m | £135.8m |
| 20 | Wolves | £3.76m | £117.7m |
Look at the top three. Arsenal finished on 85 points, seven clear of Manchester City, yet City were paid only £6.2m less. Manchester United, a further seven points back in third, ended £7.2m short of the champions because their 34 live games brought in £23.9m in facility fees, slightly more than Arsenal’s.
The places that swing the most money are often lower down. Sunderland’s final-day win over Chelsea lifted them from 10th to 7th, which on Football365’s figures added £11.3m in an afternoon — three times the value of the title over second place.
2025/26 against the last official figures
| 2024/25 (official) | 2025/26 (The Athletic) | |
|---|---|---|
| Champions | Liverpool, £174.9m | Arsenal, £198.7m |
| Bottom club | Southampton, £109.2m | Wolves, £117.7m |
| Champions’ merit payment | £53.1m | £75.2m |
| Bottom club’s merit payment | £2.6m | £3.76m |
| UK equal share | £29.8m | £31.9m |
| Overseas equal share | £59.2m | £56.5m |
| Central commercial | £7.9m | £11.5m |
| Total paid to clubs | £2,833.6m | over £3bn |
The 2024/25 column comes from the league’s official payments table. Two things changed in a year. The new domestic deal lifted the whole pot past £3bn for the first time, and the overseas equal share fell slightly while merit money rose sharply: the champions’ merit payment went from £53.1m to £75.2m.
There is also a ceiling. The league says its formula caps the ratio between its highest and lowest earners at 1.8 to 1. In 2025/26 Arsenal received about 1.69 times what Wolves did; in 2024/25 Liverpool received 1.6 times Southampton’s total.
What the players and the manager get
Bonuses are a matter between each club and its squad; the league pays nothing to players directly. Sports Illustrated reported that Arsenal’s players stood to earn £6,000 per league appearance for winning the title, with £228,000 the maximum for someone who featured in all 38 games. Next to the basic salaries in our Arsenal wage breakdown, that is a modest top-up rather than a windfall.
No figure for Mikel Arteta’s title bonus has been published, and we have not found a reliable report of one.
Medals have their own rule. Under the Premier League Handbook, a player must have appeared in at least five league matches that season to receive one from the club.
How the Champions League pays by comparison
UEFA does pay for progress round by round. Its 2025/26 distribution circular set out the amounts clubs could expect:
- €18.62m starting fee for each of the 36 league-phase clubs
- €2.1m per league-phase win and €700,000 per draw
- €11m for reaching the round of 16, €12.5m for the quarter-finals, €15m for the semi-finals and €18.5m for the final
- €6.5m extra for the winners
Even there, the bonus for lifting the trophy is smaller than the payment for reaching the round of 16. Arsenal reached the 2026 final in Budapest and lost to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties; before kick-off, Sports Illustrated put the club’s earnings from the run at £124m.
Promotion and relegation: the bigger swings
The real money in English football moves at the bottom of the table, not the top. Deloitte estimated that the winner of the 2026 Championship play-off final would gain at least £205m in extra revenue over three seasons, rising to more than £365m if the club survived its first Premier League season.
Going down is cushioned by parachute payments. Since 2016/17, relegated clubs have received 55% of the equal share of broadcast money in year one, 45% in year two and 20% in year three. A club relegated after a single season gets only the first two payments. Year one is now worth around £50m, and the Independent Football Regulator said in January 2026 that parachute payments would be part of its review of the game’s finances.
The clubs relegated in 2025/26 were West Ham, Burnley and Wolves. Burnley, promoted in 2025 and relegated straight back down, fall under the single-season rule.
Set those numbers next to each other and the shape is clear: first place over second was worth £3.76m in 2025/26, while staying up rather than going down is worth many times that. For how central money filters into salaries, see what footballers get paid at every level. For how the titles themselves stack up, see England’s most successful clubs.
FAQ
How much do you get for winning the Premier League?
Arsenal received approximately £198.7m in central payments for the 2025/26 title, on The Athletic’s calculations. About £99.9m of that was the equal share every club receives, £75.2m was the merit payment for finishing first and £23.6m came from facility fees for live TV games. There is no separate prize for the trophy.
How much is each Premier League place worth?
In 2025/26 each place in the table was worth about £3.76m in merit payments. The bottom club received one share and the champions received 20, so first place earned about £75.2m in merit money and 20th about £3.76m.
Do Premier League players get a bonus for winning the league?
Not from the league itself. Clubs set their own bonus schemes. Sports Illustrated reported that Arsenal’s players were due £6,000 per league appearance for winning the 2025/26 title, up to a maximum of £228,000.
Is the Premier League prize bigger than the Champions League prize?
They are paid in different ways. The Premier League pays by final position and TV appearances, with no bonus for the title. UEFA pays per match and per round; in 2025/26 the Champions League winners were due an extra €6.5m on top of €18.5m for reaching the final.
What do relegated clubs get?
Parachute payments: 55% of the Premier League’s equal broadcast share in the first season after relegation, 45% in the second and 20% in the third. Clubs relegated after one season receive only the first two. Year one is worth around £50m.
