The Women’s FA Cup prize pool has been frozen this year, remaining less than half of what the men are awarded for the equivalent competition.
Days after the victorious Lionesses returned home with the Euro 2025 trophy to jubilant celebrations, the Football Association confirmed the prize pool for the upcoming season.
The women’s winners will receive £430,000, the runners-up £108,000, while the victorious men’s FA Cup side will take home 365 per cent more, £2m, with £1m for second place.
In the women’s earlier rounds, the winners of a First Round Qualifying match will earn £1,800. In the men’s game, the same-round winners will earn £2,250.
The total prize pool for the men’s FA Cup is around £22m, compared to only £6m for the women. Both prize funds have been kept at the same level this year.
It is a blow to campaigners who have for several years called for parity in FA Cup prize money.
The Women’s FA Cup prize fund has slowly started to catch up with the men’s competition in recent years, but progress has frustrated campaigners and stalled.
In November 2023, the prize money for the Women’s FA Cup was doubled to £6m. But that was still little compared to the men’s competition.
The i Paper revealed in December that Liberal Democrat MP James MacCleary had introduced the Football (Gender Inequality) Bill in the House of Commons, calling for the Secretary of State to launch a review of gender inequality in football.
Lewes FC have campaigned since 2019 for parity in prize money, claiming in campaign material that “the FA Cup still undervalues the women’s game”.
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Fifa president Gianni Infantino has claimed it is Fifa’s ambition to level prize money for the men’s and women’s World Cups from 2027.
MacCleary, MP for Lewes, has met with officials at the Premier League and the Football Association to discuss the issue.
A second reading of the Bill is scheduled to take place on 17 October.
“For me equal FA Cup prize money will be a game-changer for women’s football in this country,” MacCleary told The i Paper in December.
“This is a chance for the FA, Premier League and Premier League clubs to make a huge statement that we’re all behind the women’s game and national team, and a great way of getting money into it.
“I am proud that one of my local clubs, Lewes FC, has led the campaign.”
What more do women’s players have to do?
How many more major trophies do the Lionesses have to win before female footballers can win as much prize money from the FA Cup as men?
Is back-to-back European Championships – plus a World Cup final – not enough?
Do they need to win the World Cup in 2027, too? Will they ever get there?
The FA Cup is the Football Association’s marquee competition – a chance for the governing body of English football to lead by example and set the tone for the rest of the country to follow: that women deserve parity with men.
When the FA announced it was doubling the women’s prize pool in 2023, the FA’s director of women’s football at the time, Baroness Sue Campbell, said it was the “long-term” ambition to level the prize money.
Why does it have to be long-term? How long-term are we talking? Why can’t it be now? Does anyone really think there will be a major backlash to making them equal?
The FA receives millions of pounds in public money, this is a chance to shift the dynamic with it and send a positive message.
Support for the move would far outweigh any complaints. And any backlash would, like all backlashes, do little and dissipate within hours or days.
And why was there a delay in announcing the figures? Clubs were under the impression they would be told the figures on Monday 28 July. Instead, it was pushed back two days.
The FA may argue they did not want to face accusations of attempting to bury bad news while everyone celebrated the history-making Lionesses returning home after winning back-to-back European Championships.
A cynic may posit that they didn’t want the news to break while the Lionesses, known for their strong leadership and fierce equality campaigning, were frequently in front of the cameras.
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