SOUTHAMPTON secured an immediate return to the Premier League today by beating Leeds 1-0 at Wembley Stadium in the Championship playoff final, the richest one-off match in world football.

An uplift of £140 million in future earnings from broadcast revenue and prize money is guaranteed for the south-coast club thanks to Adam Armstrong’s 24th-minute winner at England’s national stadium.

Southampton is heading back up to the lucrative Premier League alongside Leicester and Ipswich, which took the automatic promotion spots in the Championship.

As for Leeds, whose US ownership group contains major-winning golfers Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, the club’s playoff woes continued.

This was the sixth time Leeds has failed to go up via the post-season series. Making it even more painful is the fact that Leeds finished third in the regular season — three points above fourth-place Southampton — and missed out on automatic promotion after winning only one of its last six games.

It was a third win against Leeds this season for Southampton, who have won their meetings home, away and now at Wembley.

Southampton is the team of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and is owned by Sport Republic, an investment firm in the sports and entertainment industry fronted by Dragan Solak — the founder of eastern European telecommunications giant United Group. Solak was at Wembley, but it wasn’t immediately clear if Sunak was.

Southampton was in the Premier League from 2012-2023, a period notable for the club churning out a raft of talented academy players, following in the footsteps of the likes of Gareth Bale and Theo Walcott.