FIFA President: Women’s World Cup Money, TV Rights, Growth Of Women’s Soccer
Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 07:57PM By Barry Janoff
July 19, 2023: With the 2023 Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand finally here, FIFA president Gianni Infantino answered some questions, raised some others, but put the spotlight directly on the growth of women’s soccer and the athletes who will participate in the tournament over the next month.
According to FIFA in the months leading to the tournament, “Under (our) ground-breaking new model, Participating Member Associations will receive record distributions to support football development in their countries, while all participating players will receive guaranteed remuneration for their achievements at the tournament.”
FIFA previously said each of the 732 players who start the tournament would receive a minimum of $30,000, with each player for the winning team earning $270,000, “a life-changing event as the average salary of women’s football players around the world is $14,000,” according to FIFA.
Today, Infantino reiterated that players are not paid directly by FIFA but by their respective national federations, and cast some doubt on how much money each player would actual receive.
“We are moving of course in the right direction, we have been consulting with associations, with players, to try to go in the right path,” Infantino said during a media conference in New Zealand, with the tournament scheduled for July 20-Aug. 20.
“We have issued these recommendations, but we have an association of associations. So whatever payments we do, we will go through the associations and then the associations will, of course, make the relevant payments to their own players.
”But we are in touch with all the associations, and there are all different situations in different parts of the world — taxation, residence, and so on, which require special agreements that are agreements for some associations with the players from before, of course.
"So, I think we have been taking some groundbreaking decisions and it's far from the end of the story.”
In addition, after previously stating that its total investment in the Women’s World Cup 2023 is budgeted to exceed $500 million, Infantino today said the Women’s World Cup is expected to generate a half-billion dollars in revenue and that FIFA would “break even.”
The total purse for the 2023 Women’s World Cup is $110 million, with $4.290 million for the champion club vs. the $30 million total purse for the 2019 Women’s World Cup, where the U.S. champions took in $4 million total.
Total purse money at the FIFA 2015 Women’s World Cup was $15 million.
By comparison, total prize money awarded at the 32-team FIFA 2022 Men's World Cup in Qatar was $440 million.
FIFA said it is aiming to achieve parity by the next Women’s World Cup in 2027.
FIFPRO, the global players’ union, played a major role in getting FIFA to up the ante for women players.
David Aganzo, president of FIFPro, said ensuring all players at the FIFA Women’s World Cup would be supported with guaranteed remuneration was a major milestone for football and women’s sport.
“FIFPRO is very pleased with the steps taken by FIFA in establishing this guaranteed player payment mechanism,” Aganzo said via the organization in June.
“The key behind the success of this model is that it is universally applied, and it is fair, which is what female footballers tell us they want above all else. We see this is as only the beginning of what will be a transformational journey for the women’s professional football landscape together with FIFA.”
Following a decision in 2021, for this year’s women’s tournament, FIFA for the first sold TV rights separately from the Men’s World Cup.
The first Women’s World Cup was in in 1991, won by the U.S., which enters the 2023 tournament as two-time defending champions (2015, 2019).
FIFA has faced challenges selling those rights but said it anticipates a global viewing audience of two billion during the month-long event.
By comparison, FIFA last year said Argentina's shootout win over France in the final of the Qatar 2022 World Cup alone reached a global audience of 1.5 billion viewers.
"The financial element was not the most important — we didn't make ten times more than what was offered or 100 times more than what was offered before," said Infantino today regarding the decision to separate the men’s and women’s broad rights..
”But we added this promotion element and this is the way, for me, forward to promote the women's game. It's the most effective way to grow women's football.”
“Many people who still believe that women’s football is not, you know, great, a great game or it’s not so entertaining or it’s a kind of a bad copy of men’s football, or some stuff like that,” Infantino said during the media conference today in New Zealand. 
“Well, when they watch a game for the first time, they will actually see that it’s a fantastic game. It’s very entertaining. It’s great athletes playing. The level has grown incredibly in the last ten years, and the best are coming here.
"I mean, it’s 50% of the population, women around the world, more or less, right? It's really inconceivable, intellectually, that there is not one sport that can compete with some of the men's sports."
The growth of the women’s game worldwide has come with more marketing and sponsorships, bringing more money into the mix and, FIFA intends, more support.
"Well, you know, today is the eve of the opening game of the Women's World Cup and for me, it's a moment to focus on the positive, focus on the happiness, focus on the joy," said Infantino. "Until the 20th of August, you will hear from me only positive things about everything and everyone.
”If somebody's still not happy about something, well, I'm so sorry. I am happy with everything and I love everyone. As of the 21st of August, we focus on some other issues around the world and all the problems that are coming up.”
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