How much TV money can NUFC expect?

Football finances are a mystery to some. They aren't bothered in them and are purely interested in the football side of things, which is of course their choice.

However it's hard to argue that football finances have become more relevant to football fans up and down the country. The amount of debt clubs are in, turnover, expenditure, income, it can all get a little confusing, especially when you consider that there is a lack of clarity regarding income from things such as TV money.

Most fans are aware that by being in the Premier League you cane expect a windfall of cash from TV money. Some people, rather mischievously, claim that by being in the Premier League you can expect £90 million a season. This is misleading and usually only gets thrown about around the time of the play-off final, but I won't bore people wit why it is misleading. What matters, I guess, is just how much Newcastle United can expect from the TV oney pot this season.

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 £13.8million as the equal share of domestic TV rights and £17.7million as the equal share of overseas TV rights.

So we're on £31.5 million already.

On top of that, every place in the Premier League table is worth £752,000. if you base that on our current league position of 11th we can expect a further £7.52 million for our finishing prize.

That's £39.02 million.

Facility fees of £485,000 are paid to a club every time they play in a live TV match, and we will have been on TV for 16 of our league games come the end of the season. That's a further £7.76 million in TV money.

Giving us a total of £46.78 million from TV and prize money, if we finish 11th.

That's a lot of cash, but to put it in perspective our wagebill is rumoured to be £52 million a year.

So there you go. From this you can work out just how much money the club can rake it from TV revenue if you're that way inclined. Just bear in mind that £31.5 the club will get from the equal share is paid MONTHLY and not all in one go. It was paid every six months but the situation we saw at Portsmouth saw it changed to a monthly payment to help clubs budget for outgoings throughout the season rather than spend it all in one go.

Anyway, enough. This is one for the geeks among us.