Mere participation in the Premier League is highly rewarding from a financial perspective, with each of the division's 20 clubs getting a considerable slice of the money pie.
However, the 2019-20 season has been complicated by the coronavirus pandemic and the three-month postponement that occurred from March until June.
Disruption to the normal broadcast schedule has the potential to severely impact the available prize money, with industries across the world feeling the reverberations of lockdown.
So, what will Premier League winners Liverpool and, indeed, the rest of the clubs get in prize money this extraordinary season?
How much will the 2019-20 Premier League winners earn?
Winning the Premier League brings with it all sorts of concomitant financial rewards, but the immediate prize for the champions is currently in the region of £150 million ($182m).
However, that is expected to change for 2019-20, with revenues predicted to fall in the aftermath of the worldwide lockdown measures imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19.
It had been feared, when the idea of cancelling the season was a real possibility, that clubs would have to hand back or miss out on a significant sum of prize money.
Prize money is drawn from broadcast revenue - TV money - and a team's monetary health come the end of the season depends on how many televised games they are involved in, as well as their final position.
You can get an idea of how the broadcast money is divided among the teams in the table for the 2018-19 season below.
Premier League 2018-19 prize money
| Pos | Team | Equal | Facility | Merit | Int'l TV | Comm. | Ovr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Man City | £34m | £30m | £38m | £43m | £5m | £151m |
| 2 | Liverpool | £34m | £33m | £36m | £43m | £5m | £152m |
| 3 | Chelsea | £34m | £29m | £35m | £43m | £5m | £146m |
| 4 | Tottenham | £34m | £30m | £33m | £43m | £5m | £145m |
| 5 | Arsenal | £34m | £29m | £31m | £43m | £5m | £142m |
| 6 | Man Utd | £34m | £31m | £29m | £43m | £5m | £143m |
With a rough gap of around £2m ($2.43m) between places in the league, even the most innocuous of results can tip the scales in favour of one mid-table team finishing noticeably richer than the other.
While each club earned a minimum of approximately £82m in TV money for their troubles in the Premier League in 2018-19, the 'facility fees' and merit payments were variable from team to team.
For example, in the 2018-19 season, City picked up just under £38.4m ($46.7m) for finishing first in merit payments, while Liverpool's second place earned them £36.5m ($44.4m) .
However, the Reds earned more overall than the champions thanks to their involvement in a greater number of TV games - 29 to City's 26, so three more to be precise.
Getty ImagesPremier League prize money breakdown
The Premier League broke down their central broadcast revenues as follows in 2018-19:
- Equal Share - 50 per cent of all finance equally shared between all teams.
- Facility Fees - 25 per cent shared based on number of club's matches broadcast in UK.
- Merit Payments - 25 per cent shared based on league table finish.
- Central Commercial revenues : Equally shared.
- International broadcasting revenues : Equally shared.
The change in the Premier League's broadcast deals for 2019-20 onwards was initially expected to see an overall rise of around £180m ($219m), give or take, though it is unclear if that will be the case now.
Curiously, domestic income was actually down for the latest batch of contracts, with increased finance from foreign broadcasters instead contributing to the larger fiscal outlook.
In addition, the new injection of revenue from overseas will not, as it historically has been, be split equally between the 20 teams.
Instead, it will follow the pattern of the merit payments, and will be allocated in line with finishing position.
In theory, this will hand a significant increase in finance to the top clubs from 2019-20 onwards, though teams are still set to receive a fair equal share of overall fiscal income.
With revenues from ticket sales set to be down across the board for clubs due to the public-health-led decision to play games behind closed doors, this prize money - whatever it may be - will be crucial.