'Why it's time for women's FA Cup prize money to be same as men's'

Γνώμη/Editorial • Από: PROBET Editorial • Δημοσιεύτηκε: 23/11/2025 07:42

This weekend it is the women's FA Cup second round and everyone is hoping that with a fair wind they may make it all the way to Wembley - well we can dream, can't we?

In 2017 Lewes Football Club, where I am a director, became the first - and still the only - professional or semi-professional club in the country to resource its women's and men's teams equally.

Since then, and thanks to the Football Association's central grants and commercial revenue shares, our women's team has at times received a greater level of support - matching their higher league position. In other words, moving from Equality FC to a position of equity.

Since 2019 we have also been campaigning for equal FA Cup prize money for the women's and men's competitions - not as a slogan, but as a strategy.

If the FA Cup is truly, as it claims to be, "the game's great leveller", then it is time for the finances to catch up with the fairytale.

For a men's club, a win in the second round of the FA Cup is worth £79,500. For the women it is just £8,000 - a £71,500 difference.

In the first round the difference is £41,750, while in the third round it is £86,500. Same game, same rules, same competition, same knockout format, same governing body - but a different value placed on the players.

Let's park the usual excuses - "commercial reality", "revenue difference", "it's complicated".

No, it's not. The FA decides the prize fund for both competitions. It could easily make them equal tomorrow - it just needs to want to do it.

It is simply too easy and lazy to dismiss the call for equality, as some people do, by pointing to crowd sizes and broadcast revenues. Yes, attendances for men's matches are higher, and yes, the men's TV rights are currently worth more.

But the FA does not take a share of gate receipts, so that is an irrelevant argument when discussing equal prize money. And because the FA is publicly committed to redistribution, there is ultimately no valid justification for maintaining unequal prize funds.

The FA has, in the past, chosen to ignore our requests for explanations and engagement but, positively, has recently begun to be more receptive.

The irony is that the FA does know how to 'do equality'. Since 2020, it has paid the women's and men's England teams the same match fees and bonuses. That principle - equal pay for equal performance - is already policy at St George's Park.

The FA's own 'Reaching Higher: Women's & Girls' Game Strategy 2024-28' also pledges to "deliver equal opportunities" and "build robust, high-quality competition structures".

Why does equality not apply to FA Cup?

So, the question is not whether the FA believes in equality. It is why that belief stops with the FA Cup.

The total prize pot for the men's competition this season is £23.5m, while for the women's it is £6.14m. Is the FA, essentially, telling girls and women they are not worth as much as their male counterparts?

The Lewes FC campaign is not only about equality between the women's and men's competitions, it also asks for a more equitable split within the men's competition.

Right now, the lion's share of the £23.5m men's prize fund will flow to wealthy Premier League clubs who arguably need it least and where it will make very little difference. A rebalanced structure would share the rewards more evenly across the pyramid - helping small clubs survive and thrive, not just aim to fill the highlights reel once a year.

The finances of football are, as I now know only too well, incredibly and increasingly perilous and yet here is a simple way of ensuring that prize money is spread further and more fairly. You can find our full proposal here: equalfacup.com.

Meanwhile, the women's prize pot is so thinly spread across hundreds of clubs that many of them will lose money in earlier rounds. Between travel, staffing, medical cover and pitch costs, participation often costs more than a victory will earn.

Why we are asking clubs to pause for 21 seconds

This year we have written to every club in the women's competition asking for their support and to consider taking some simple actions - a team photo before kick-off with the players making an 'equal' sign with their arms, and a 21-second pause after kick-off marking 1921, the year the FA banned women's football.

The ban lasted 50 years and robbed women's football of decades of development, investment and, critically, the building of the cultural capital that is so fundamental to the success of the men's game - the embedding of football into the fabric of our lives.

This is not a protest against football - it is a reminder of what football stands for. The FA Cup was built on the idea that anyone could win - that teams from small towns matter as much as the ones who play at Wembley.

The FA wants the women's game to stand on its own two feet and so offering equal FA Cup prize money is a single, simple, transformative step. Equal prize money is not charity - it is reward for performance.

It is football doing what it does best - celebrating those who earn it, no matter who they are.

Ben Haines, Ellen White and Jen Beattie are back for another season of the Women's Football Weekly podcast. New episodes drop every Tuesday on BBC Sounds, plus find interviews and extra content from the Women's Super League and beyond on the Women's Football Weekly feed