Saints banked £76.9m in payments from the Premier League in the 2013/14 season.

The sum is more than £30m above what they earned during the previous campaign, thanks largely to a bumper new television deal.

With 50 per cent of the UK broadcast revenue shared equally between the division’s 20 sides, Saints, as well as each other club, received one payment of about £21.6m.

They also received about £8.6m in ‘facility fees’ for being shown on television a minimum of ten times during the campaign.

On top of that, they received just over £16m for finishing eighth in the table.

With the overseas broadcast income and central commercial funds being shared equally, Saints also banked about £26.3m and £4.3m respectively from those pots.

Liverpool earned the most during the season, banking just over £97.5m.