Players in Women’s World Cup to be paid £122 million prize money directly

Gamers at subsequent month’s Girls’s World Cup shall be paid by Fifa for the primary time, with every of the 23 squad members of the successful aspect pocketing £217,000.

In a big step ahead for the feminine sport, people competing on the match in Australia and New Zealand shall be assured to take residence £24,000, with that sum rising the additional their crew progresses.

On condition that the common international wage for a ladies’s footballer is $14,000 (£11,300), as highlighted in Fifa’s 2022 benchmarking report, some gamers may make more cash in a fortnight than they earn in a whole season for his or her golf equipment. 

Fifpro, the gamers’ union, hailed the transfer as “large international collective motion by over 150 nationwide crew gamers” however the cash continues to be a fraction of the person funds loved by male gamers at a World Cup.

This summer time’s Girls’s World Cup can have a file quantity of prize cash of $152 million (£122 million) and though that represents a 300 per cent improve from the 2019 version, it’s nonetheless solely round a 3rd of $440 million (£353 million) prize pot on the males’s World Cup in Qatar.

Final October, Fifpro despatched a letter to the worldwide governing physique on behalf of 150 gamers from 25 nationwide groups – together with gamers from England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Eire – calling for fairer monetary circumstances and a assure that at the least 30 per cent of prize cash could be allotted to collaborating gamers on the match.

“At our final respective Fifa World Cups, ladies earned lower than seven per cent of the boys’s prize cash. That hole is important in and of itself and tells solely a part of the story,” the union acknowledged within the letter.  

“Many gamers on the Girls’s World Cup come into the match as amateurs or semi-professional, which undermines their preparation and, in flip, the standard of soccer we see on the pitch. Many gamers haven’t any settlement with their Member Associations to make sure they obtain honest and equitable remedy, together with a assured World Cup compensation, for instance, as a portion of World Cup prize cash.”

Beforehand, nationwide associations weren’t required to distribute a minimal quantity of World Cup prize cash to gamers however underneath the brand new settlement, £88.5 million of Fifa’s whole prize fund should be paid on to gamers in every of the 32 crew squads.

Fifa has beforehand mentioned it’s aiming for parity between the boys’s and ladies’s tournaments by 2027, however with broadcast offers for subsequent month’s match in a number of key markets but to be reached, the governing physique is known to be shouldering extra of the prize cash in comparison with sponsors than it anticipated.

Final month, Fifa president Gianni Infantino revealed the gives from the foremost European broadcasters have been so low they have been a “slap within the face” to the gamers and “all ladies worldwide”.