The pot of gold for St Johnstone is third place in the SPL, according to Perth chairman Steve Brown.
Now that Saints have clinched a top six place, sights have been set on a second successive Europa League campaign, not to mention the financial rewards of getting to third at the end of this season.
Brown, who cautioned that in terms of gate receipts alone, they would actually have brought in more money by finishing in the bottom half of the table, said: “The prize money for finishing sixth is £70,000 but the big thing is that we know we can’t go down from that.
“If you’re in seventh place after the split you could have a bad few games, finish 11th and lose £250,000.
“The big jump in money in the top six is fourth to third. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but the percentage goes up a lot. That’s where we’d like to get both for financial reasons and obviously to qualify for Europe again.
“The manager and the players will rightly target second, but you’ve got to be realistic and Motherwell are in control at the moment as far as that’s concerned.
“We’ve got one game before the split but we’re already thinking about what will happen after it, as ourselves and Inverness have both made it. It’s a massive match because a win would cut the gap to two points.”
Steve Brown is thrilled at the achievement of manager Steve Lomas and his players but he admitted: “Take away the prize money and we would be better off in the bottom six.
“We could have had Hearts, Dundee and Aberdeen at home, whereas potentially it will be Motherwell and Inverness.”
Brown believes Lomas can take even greater pride in this campaign than the last.
He explained: “I don’t want to speak for Steve but I think it’s been a better achievement.
“After our first five games it looked like we would have a battle to stay up but we went on a run of wins and have been in a good position ever since.
“Steve’s done that without a prolific striker. I think he’s the only manager to be successful without someone getting into double figures.
“Who knows what would have happened if we still had Fran Sandaza, but what we have had is players getting goals from various parts of the team.”
Nor can anyone say that Lomas is just continuing what Derek McInnes had set in motion.
Brown added: “There have been plenty of managers who have taken over teams doing well and taken them down the way.
“People can say that it was Derek’s team last year but Steve still had seven months to manage them and there’s no doubt now that the vast majority are his players now, playing his way.”