Lord Sugar pockets £500k sweetener for YouView role
YouView, a television platform backed by BBC, ITV, C4, C5, BT, Arqiva and talkTalk, has announced that it has shelled out £500k over the past 12 months to secure the services of TV axeman Lord Sugar.
This wodge is five times thicker than the pile of cash given to Sugar’s predecessor, Kip Meek, who raked in £97k over eight months before being ditched for missing deadlines.
Figures filed at Companies House show that the media firms staffing costs have tripled to over £3m for just 29 employees for a nine month period in 2012.
A YouView spokesperson defended the bumper payout, claiming that it had been approved by all seven shareholders in recognition that Sugar had ‘spearheaded YouView’s successful entry to market
YouView is a subscription free £299 set-top box which merges live and on-demand television.