Soccer players call for same World Cup prize money for men and women in letter

A group of 150 professional soccer players sent a letter in October calling on FIFA to pay the same prize money at the women’s World Cup as it does for men.

Players’ union FIFPRO confirms the letter was sent and says it is in negotiations with FIFA. The names of the players are not disclosed.

Argentina’s soccer federation received 40 million euros after the men won the World Cup in Qatar in late December. The total prize pool for the men was just under 440 million euros. At the last women’s World Cup in 2019, the Americans received about 4 million euros, from a prize pool of 30 million euros.

The Women’s World Cup will be held from July 20 to August 20 this year in Australia and New Zealand.

The players’ call comes after there has already been much discussion about equal pay for men and women in recent years.

For example, the KNVB already announced last summer that female internationals would be rewarded the same as male Oranje players.

“I think this is a historic milestone,” Jan Dirk van der Zee, the KNVB director responsible for women’s soccer, said at the time.

The KNVB decided last year to reward men and women equally:

He then also called on UEFA and FIFA to increase tournament premiums. “It’s already going up, but really too slowly. In tennis, for example, the prize money for men and women is equal, the same can be done in soccer.”

So prize money from final tournaments is not yet shared equally at the KNVB.

The U.S. Soccer Federation is the only soccer federation in the world that distributes prize money equally for men and women.