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As the FIFA Women’s World Cup gets underway, there has been much interest in the prize money. Last year FIFA president Gianni Infantino said this was “massively higher than the last World Cup”, adding, “We are making progress”. Let’s look at whether this is actually the case.
On the face of it, growth is impressive as prize money doubles from $15m to $30m. Also for the first time women’s funding includes $11.5m for pre-tournament preparation & $8.5m to clubs for players taking part. So, in total, contributions have more than tripled from $15m to $50m. 
However, the women’s $30m prize money is still only 7.5% of the men’s $400m. In fact, as FIFPRO noted, “the changes actually signify an increase in the gap between men’s and women’s prize money”. This has risen from $343m at the 2015 tournament to $370m at the 2019 World Cup.
It is true that there are only 24 teams in the women’s 2019 World Cup, while there were 32 teams in the 2018 men’s tournament, but the difference is still immense if we pro-rate women’s prize money from $30m to $40m. Also worth noting men’s prize money rises to $440m in 2022.
The comparison is even worse if we take Infantino’s $50m figure for total contributions, i.e. including preparation and club benefits. In this case, men receive a total of $657m, so the gap to the women is a massive $607m, which is $146m more than the $461m gap in 2015.
So, while the total funding for the men’s World Cup has “only” increased by 38% (from $476m to $657m), and this has grown by a hefty 233% for the women’s World Cup, it is from a much lower base ($15m to $50m).
In fact, it is striking that the $38m awarded to France for winning the 2018 Men’s World Cup is actually more than the $30m total available to the 24 teams at the Women’s World Cup.
Not only is the difference between prize money enormous, but it actually grows the further a team progresses in the World Cup. So, for a team eliminated at the group stage the difference is “only” $7.25m ($8m vs. $0.75m), while it is $34m for the winners ($38m vs. $4m).
Looked at another way, the women’s prize money is just 7.5% of the men’s in total, though the shares for each stage are usually higher, e.g. 10.5% for the World Cup winners.
What must be frustrating for the women is that the gap has actually widened at this World Cup. As an example, in 2014 the German men’s team got $35m for winning the trophy, so $33m more than the US women’s team got in 2015. The gap has increased to $34m this year ($38m vs. $4m).
It’s not as if FIFA don’t have enough in the bank to further increase the prize money at the Women’s World Cup, as their cash reserves surged to an incredible $2.7 bln in 2018. To paraphrase Infantino, maybe they could have used this surplus to “boost this World Cup even more.”
Of course, many will believe that the discrepancy in prize money is purely a commercial issue, but Infantino himself has pointed out that the Men’s World Cup attracts around 4 times as many viewers as the Women’s WC, while the Men’s prize money is 13 times as much.
Part of the problem is that nobody knows for sure the commercial value of the Women’s World Cup, as its TV and sponsorship rights are not sold separately, but bundled together with the Men’s WC.
Let’s leave the last word to former World Cup winner Hope Solo, who argued, “The state of the game is in a beautiful place because of the talent alone and the commercial dollars being put in, but FIFA remain very chauvinistic when it comes to putting money into the women's game.”
