What else could Brighton spend Richard Scudamore’s £250,000 on?

The news that outgoing Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore is set to receive a £5m bonus paid for out of the 20 top flight club’s pockets has been met with incredulity by supporters across the country.

Scudamore takes home a rumoured £2.5m a year. At a time when ticket prices are at a record high, travelling to and from matches costs a prohibitive amount for many fans, only four Premier League clubs pay all their staff the living wage and grassroots football is in a state of disrepair, it seems a complete disgrace for the clubs to be handing over £250,000 each to a multi-millionaire.

Remarkably, according to reports on Twitter just five clubs voted against the proposal put forward by Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck. Only Huddersfield Town, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Leicester City, Burnley and Crystal Palace felt that they could find something more worthwhile to spend money on than a golden handshake for a bloke who pocketed £6m in bonuses in 2016 alone for negotiating the league’s current television deal.

After the proposal was passed, Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy said, “We are all very supportive (of the payment).” Clearly, given that he’ll be handing over £250,000 more to Scudamore than he gave Mauricio Pochentino for new players in the summer.

West Ham United owner David Gold added, “He deserves everything he gets, this is all very appropriate and we’re all very pleased.” Easy to say when you’re paying a peppercorn rent to use the London Stadium at taxpayers expense.

Sensibly, Brighton and Hove Albion haven’t commented on the proposals or the golden handshake but if the rumours are to be believed, then Paul Barber voted in favour of the payment. For some context, the £250,000 the club will hand over to Scudamore makes him our 37th most expensive signing of the last 20 years.

Here are nine other uses that the Albion could have found for the money they are set to hand over to Scudamore.

Knock £10 off 25,000 Amex Stadium season tickets
Now we know that £10 isn’t much – in most Brighton pubs it won’t even get you two pints these days. But when the details of season ticket renewals ahead of the 2019-20 season are released and there is an inevitable price increase of around £10 (the smallest increase for 2018-19 was just under £22 in the East Stand family area), then the extra money that the club will be asking us to pay is effectively going straight into the bonus of a multi millionaire.

Supply free coach travel for 8,333 supporters to away games
The Premier League may have reluctantly agreed to cap the price of tickets for away fans at £30 in 2016, but hitting the road to watch the Albion is still hugely expensive. Working on an average price of £30 per person for a seat on a coach to an away game, the £250,000 going to Scudamore could pay for 8,333 Albion supporters to have free travel to an away game. Looking at the allocations for our next few games on the road, that’s the entire allocation on offer for the games at Burnley, Huddersfield, Bournemouth and all but 42 tickets for West Ham.

Pay for 1,000 supporters to use Seven Stars bar for the season
Remember in the summer of 2016 when the club announced that access to the previously free Seven Stars bar would now cost £250 per person to enter for the season? 1,000 Albion supporters could use the facility for a season with the money be put into Scudamore’s golden handshake.

Give every person employed by the Albion the living wage
According to the Living Wage Foundation, only four Premier League Clubs – Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool and West Ham are – meet the standard of paying all of their employees the living wage. That is a shameful state of affairs in an industry awash with money as it is, let alone one that can afford to give £5m to a man who scarcely needs the cash.

Sign 250 Gary Harts
£250,000 might not get you very far in terms of squad improvements in the Premier League in the year 2018, especially when you’re forking out £14m on the likes of Jurgen Locadia. Back in the day though it would have got you 250 Gary Harts from Stansted (as long as you chucked a set of kit in), 2.5 Bobby Zamoras or 62.5 Peter Wards.

Add over a quarter onto the sports and recreation budget of Brighton and Hove City Council
Grassroots football is dying and a lot of it has to do with an appalling lack of facilities. Cuts from central government have forced councils like Brighton and Hove to chop away at budgets allocated to sports and recreation, leaving substandard changing rooms, dangerous pitches and a lack of basic equipment such as suitable goal posts. At the start of the parks football season for example, teams turned up to find mountains of grass left all over their pitches because the council couldn’t afford to pay anyone to clear up five months worth of cuttings, rendering most pitches in the city unplayable. A freedom of information request revealed that the City Council spent £866,540 on sports facilities in the 2013-14 financial year, a figure which is bound to be less after five further years of cuts. Scudamore’s pay off could increase the amount of money spent on grassroots football facilities in the city by over a quarter.

Buy eight new minibuses for Albion in the Community
There is no doubting that the club are hugely supportive of Albion in the Community which is one of the reasons why the scheme wins so many awards. But however much money the Albion put behind it, they could always do more. £250,000 could buy eight wheelchair accessible minibuses at £30,000 a pop, not to mention supporting all the other brilliant work that goes on across Sussex.

Help the Robert Eaton Memorial Fund kit out up to 250 kids teams
Since being set up in 2001 in memory of an Albion fan who lost his life in the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Centre, the Robert Eaton Memorial Fund has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to help disadvantaged kids football teams across the world. One of the ways the charity does that is buying new kit and equipment for clubs. Working on the generous assumption that a new kit, set of balls and various training equipment costs £1000, then had REMF received the Albion’s spare £250,000 rather than Scudamore, there could be 250 junior football teams out there with much needed funding.

Buy 52,083 pints at the Amex
If Scudamore wants to put his £250,000 from the Albion to good use rather than coming across as a money grabbing bastard, he could stick it behind the bar at the Amex to bankroll 52,083 pints. We’d drink to that.