Soccer is not only a great sport but also a great business. This statement is true for club soccer, where player transfers can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and top players’ salaries reach several tens of millions a year.
However, international FIFA soccer is also trying to keep up with this trend.
In modern football, every player gets paid. Because every country receives bonuses for qualifying, most countries distribute those bonuses among players. The payment is usually incentive-based: if they advance to the next round, they will be paid more, and so on.
So, do soccer players get paid for FIFA, and how much do they get for winning the World Cup if they do? Also, how is the prize money divided between the participants?
Soccer players do get paid but FIFA does not provide any direct benefits to the players (unless they are among the winners, in which case they will receive a medal – gold, silver, or bronze for first, second, and third place, respectively).
We researched all that and much more, and we’re ready to dive into the data! Shall we?
How Much Does FIFA Pay for World Cup?
Since the money earned by the teams is not directly transferred to the players, they agree in advance with the national federations on bonuses, that is, on the percentage of the prize amount that FIFA will transfer.
In some countries, especially African ones, such negotiations can drag on and even lead to scandals. So, in 2014, the players of the Cameroon national team even threatened to boycott the championship in Brazil if the federation did not increase the amount of prize payments to the players.
The amount of bonuses each national federation promised to its players is known from fragmentary press reports. After analyzing information from open sources, it is possible to roughly calculate the promised income of soccer players of individual teams.
According to the press, national teams were allocated a total prize fund of 8 million dollars for the World Cup qualification and $1.5 million for expenses.
The winning nation, France, recieved $38 million in prize money as well as a replica World Cup trophy to keep (which was gold plated instead of being the real 18 carat gold trophy).
Every new World Cup edition, the prize money for the winners is usually increased. France, Russia’s winners, received $3 million more than Germany did in Brazil in 2014 and $4 million less than the future winner in Qatar 2022 ($42 million).
When that amount is divided among all the players and staff, and the country’s soccer association may keep some of it, the money each individual player receives isn’t much for big-league players, who typically earn that amount from their clubs in a week or a month.
It’s about having the privilege of representing your country on a global stage. It’s no surprise that most of these players are unconcerned about money because they are the pinnacle of football, every player’s dream, viewed by billions of people around the world, and wear their country’s name on their chests.
Injury compensations
Not everyone in soccer feels joy when the World Cup happens. Clubs have often clashed with national managers over player fatigue and potential injury.
So, the FA provides clubs with an undisclosed amount of money for soccerers’ absence for international matches.
And Fifa has set aside $209m to compensate clubs for losing players over the 2018 World Cup period. This equates to about $8,530 per person per day, effectively subsidizing wages for a while.
Since 2012, Fifa has also insured against players getting injured while on international duty. This pays up to $32,000 a day, which would just about cover Kane, but not the likes of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Neymar.
FIFA Pays Pennies Considering Players’ Club Paychecks, but It’s Fine
There’s rather a lot of money in soccer. For example, Premier League players now earn an average of $60,000 weekly.
At the 2018 World Cup, the total prize money rose from $358m (£271m) in 2014 to $400m, with $38m going to the winners.
Fifa, the sport’s world governing body, allows individual countries to decide how much to pay in appearance fees and how to divide up prize money.
Young French striker Mbappe has caused a stir by revealing he is giving his $20,000-per-match World Cup appearance fees to a charity providing sporting activities for disabled children.
In this, he follows the example set by England’s players since 2007. In that time, all the appearance fee money they would have received has instead gone to the England Footballers Foundation, which has distributed more than £5m to charities.
Talking about England, from the start of 2008 up to and including England’s game against Colombia on Tuesday, there have been 122 matches. That suggests total payments to players per match have come to about £41,000 on average.
If a squad consists of 23 players – some contain fewer, some more – that equates to just under $2,400 per team member per match. If the money is shared among only those who get on to the field, rather than just the bench, that amount will rise by a few hundred pounds.
If these sums – described as “conservative” estimates by Rob Wilson, a sports economist at Sheffield Hallam University – are correct, they are small compared with club wages. They are much lower than Mbappe’s $20,000 per game for France, too.
If our calculation is right, Harry Kane will earn about one-hundredth of his $243,000 weekly pay for Tottenham Hotspur each time he turns out for England.
It’s not big money by their standards. When you put it in the context of the Premier League, it doesn’t even scratch the surface.
But what of England’s potential $6,1m bonus, should they win the World Cup? Well, even World Cup bonuses are not where big money is for star players.
Fifa says coverage of the tournament has been watched for at least 20 minutes by 2.2 billion people. This exposure means potentially millions of pounds in sponsorship and endorsements.
And you always see a spike in earnings post-competition, particularly among the top four or five players.
Profiting from the national team – a taboo
Despite all the talk of money, profiting from one’s country is a taboo among soccer players – and has long been so.
Before this year’s World Cup, Germany’s soccer association announced that its players would receive $69,000 for reaching the quarter-finals – $115,000 for reaching the semi-finals, and $185,000 for the runners-up slot. Winning would mean $369,000 each.
But the association’s president, Reinhard Grindel, said that “the sporting challenge rather than the financial award” would motivate players.
Today’s soccer players feel the same. They get paid a lot for playing for their clubs, so, over the years, the appearance fees they get for international soccer have – if anything – become less important to them.
World Cup in Qatar 2022 – How Much Will FIFA Pay?
FIFA pays clubs a daily release fee for each player attending the World Cup. For the group stage alone, more than 150 million euros will be paid out to 384 football clubs worldwide.
Most money flows into the Premier League, but Real Madrid receives the highest club sum.
FIFA pays the equivalent of 7,236 euros (7,568 US dollars) per day for each participating player. Payments start on the first day and will end one day after the last matchday.
Important: If a World Cup player has changed clubs one or more times since 2016, the former clubs receive a third of the payment on a pro-rata basis. This regulation also applies to current transfers.
With a total of 3.35 million euros, the newly crowned Champions League Real Madrid winner receives the highest compensation payments for its players of all 384 clubs.
Two clubs closely follow the Madrilenians in the English league: The English champions, Manchester City, secured second place with around 3.2 million euros, ahead of FA Cup winners FC Chelsea with 2.98 million euros in compensation payments.
FC Bayern Munich receives the highest sum from FIFA in Germany, at EUR 2.15 million, thus securing a ninth place in the international rankings. Borussia Dortmund, as the second-best club in Germany, can still secure 20th place with 1.46 million. Close behind, Borussia Mönchengladbach is in 22nd place with 1.33 million euros.
In a direct comparison of the professional leagues, the clubs in the Premier League received by far the most compensation payments at EUR 27.41 million by the end of the preliminary round.
The clubs in the Spanish league, which come second with €14.67 million, receive just under half as much. The German clubs collect almost a million less and thus end up in third place (13.67 million euros).
Even if the Italians do not participate in the World Cup, clubs can still look forward to additional income. FIFA paid out around 12.68 million euros (fourth place) to Juventus and Co. France follows in fifth place with EUR 12.29 million. Saudi Arabia surprisingly came in eighth with EUR 5.3 million.