The Spanish Women’s Soccer Team seeks to win its first star in the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. After his journey through Canada in 2015, when he did not make it past the group stage, and France in 2019, where the dream died in the round of 16, the team led by Jorge Vilda seeks to lift the most ‘coveted’ Women’s World Cup in this idyllic setting of history.
For the ninth edition of this competition, which began on July 20, FIFA has taken a step forward and has allocated the largest loot distributed to date. This had been the main claim of players and federations, who have struggled to achieve economic conditions and compensation at the level of the competition.
What is the economic difference with the men’s World Cup?
For this reason, the organization headed by Gianni Infantino has allocated 150 million dollars to finance the tournament, multiplying by ten the investment of the World Cup in Canada and by three that of the one played in France. This amount is broken down in such a way that 110 million are distributed among cash prizes; 11.3 million go to the Aid Program to compensate the teams for giving up their players during the tournament.
It is evident that women’s football has escalated to another dimension, however, the data shows that the wage gap with respect to men’s football is still very wide. If we take the last men’s edition held in Qatar last winter as a reference, FIFA determined a ‘prize money’ of 444 million, four times greater than the cash distribution of the World Cup analyzed.
In this line, the team that is proclaimed world champion on August 20 in Sydney will pocket a prize of 4.29 million dollars, which is far from the 42 million that the Argentine National Team obtained for winning in Qatar. This disparity is also present in the ‘welcome’ of 1.5 million that FIFA gives to the participating women’s teams, which drops to 9 million in the men’s competition.
A new financing model
However, for this edition, FIFA establishes a new financing model to guarantee the remuneration of all the players, beyond the money distributed by federation. So, all the players will receive a universal economic prize, equitably and according to how much progress is made in the competition, the exact figures of which can be found in the following article.
Infantino sets a date for salary parity
Despite the progress, the data shows that there is still a long way to go to achieve salary parity, which Infantino has set himself as a goal for the men’s and women’s World Cup in 2026 and 2027, through a new commercial strategy with the implantation tion of a specific marketing concept for women’s soccer.
