How much prize money does Fifa, world football’s governing body, distribute among the teams taking part in the World Cup? Here we give you a breakout on what the participating nations, including the champions, get. Also, read on to know how much Fifa earns from football's biggest tournament.
Fifa spent $103 million, including the money given to champions, at the France World Cup 1998. Twenty years later, the amount stands at $791 million. For the Russia event, Fifa will spend 40% more than what it spent in 2014 in Brazil, where the total rewards were pegged at $576 million.
In the 2018 event, Fifa will award a total of $400 million to the 32 teams that have qualified. That’s 12 per cent higher than the $358 million awarded to teams at the 2014 World Cup. In Russia, the remaining $391 million will be spent on overheads such as team preparation and club benefit programmes, among others.
Distribution of $400 million
Each team will get at least $8 million for participating in the group stage. (There is an additional $1.5 million for each team for tournament preparations. Team preparation money is not included in this $400 million basket).
If a team progresses to the round of 16, it will get an extra $4 million. So that will take the share of any team in the first phase of the knockout stage to $12 million.
Teams that are knocked out in the quarter-finals will receive an additional $4 million, which takes the allotment for each team at this stage to $16 million.
The defeated semi-finalists to contest the third-place play-off will share a pie of $46 million. The third place-holder will get $24 million and the fourth will bag $22 million.
The World Cup champions will be paid $38 million and the runners-up $28 million.
Distribution of remaining $391 million
A) Team preparation money: All 32 teams qualified to participate in the World Cup will get $1.5 million each. So the total allotment here is $48 million (32*1.5 million)
B) Club benefit programme: A total of $209 million will be disbursed among the clubs releasing their players to participate in the 2018 Fifa World Cup.
C) Club protection programme: A total of $134 million will be paid to compensate clubs for losses incurred due to a player’s injury at the tournament.
Comparison with other leagues
Though World Cup is the biggest football tournament on the planet, it is nowhere close to the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League in terms of prize money distribution.
EPL rewarded its 20 teams with a total of $2.9 billion in the 2017-18 season. The UEFA paid $1.6 billion in prize money in its latest edition.
How Fifa makes money
A bulk of Fifa’s revenues comes from broadcast rights. According to the Fifa Financial Report 2014, TV rights alone accounted for $2.43 billion of the total $4,8 billion it made during the World Cup 2014.
The second biggest revenue generator for Fifa is marketing rights, which accounted for a revenue of $1.53 billion four years ago. During the tournament in Brazil, tickets fetched $530 million to become the third largest revenue generator for the governing body. Fifa also made $180 million from hospitality rights and $110 million from licensing rights.