Manchester City are set to earn a record £166MILLION after clinching their third straight Premier League title

Manchester City are expected to pocket about £166million from Premier League central funds and in prize cash this season, a record high figure for any winner of England’s elite division.

When Pep Guardiola’s club won their fourth Premier League title in five years last May, they picked up £153m, but that will increase this year as a batch of improved overseas TV contracts from 2022-23 kick in.

The Mail on Sunday forecast for this season’s bumper payouts expects the 20 clubs to share around £2.7billion from the league.

Each club’s reward is made up of six separate elements: equal shares of domestic and overseas TV cash; differing amounts of domestic and overseas cash based on merit, ie finishing position; ‘facility’ money that increases the more often a club has appeared in a televised live game in the UK; and a share of the league’s commercial income.

All foreign TV cash used to be split equally until the biggest clubs started agitating for a bigger share of that pot for themselves.

They argued that the most-watched teams internationally were Manchester United and Liverpool, and to a lesser extent Chelsea and Arsenal and the other Big Six, so they should get more money.

A compromise was reached that from the 2019-20 season, any additional foreign cash in that rights cycle would be split on merit (position), not equally. The pandemic then meant a chaotic divvy-up ensued after rebates were needed to be made to some broadcasters.

The 2022-23 season, the first year of the new rights cycle, is arguably the first time the new allocation method is obvious, with Southampton in 20th place expected to get only around £1.5m of overseas merit money and City getting around £22m.