What UEFA’s prize-money announcements mean for players, clubs and federations

As leading figures from the European game gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland on Monday for the Euro 2025 draw, it was announced that prize money for the tournament will more than double compared with the previous edition. The 16 teams, which include world champions Spain, holders England and first-time qualifiers Wales, will share €41million (£34m, $43m).

Federations are also obliged to split at least 30 per cent of the money among players, while clubs whose players compete at the tournament will share €6m, representing women’s football’s most lucrative club benefits programme.

European football’s governing body, UEFA, also approved a new second-tier club competition that will launch next season. It will be known as the Women’s Europa Cup, with a new financial distribution system for European cup competitions put in place.

analyses the major talking points below.

Explaining the prize-money increase

In the headline act, UEFA’s executive committee, which oversees the organisation’s decision-making processes, approved a record €41m prize-money pot for Euro 2025.

The allocation represents a 156 per cent increase from 2022 (€16m) and more than five times the amount paid out for the 2017 tournament (€8m).

While the prize money for the women’s Euros has increased exponentially, it still lags significantly behind the men’s competition (Euro 2024 had a total prize fund of €331m, from overall revenue of about €2.4billion). But the increase is a step in the right direction.

UEFA’s distribution of the prize money is especially interesting. National associations participating in Euro 2022 received a €600,000 participation fee, but this has now increased to €1.8m for Euro 2025, accounting for 70 per cent of the overall allocated prize money.

This approach speaks to UEFA’s desire to reward all member associations who qualify, albeit successful teams will also receive additional remuneration. It is in keeping with UEFA’s new women’s football strategy, Unstoppable, which focuses largely on fostering competitive balance in an ecosystem threatening to be dominated by a select few clubs and federations. The Euros was only expanded to 16 teams in 2017, having traditionally been something of a closed shop to the smaller footballing nations. Wales and Poland will make their debuts in 2025.

In the group stages, a draw will earn €50,000 while a win will accrue €100,000. There will be staggered bonuses for each knockout stage. The winner of Euro 2025 could earn a maximum of €5.1m if they win all three group-stage matches. In Euro 2022, winners England received €2.085m in total prize money.

“It’s huge and a really important message from UEFA in terms of how we’re seeing the game grow and evolve,” said the Football Association’s women’s technical director Kay Cossington.

“It gives us the ability to provide more of a legacy of the game as well. Of course it goes into the planning and preparation and to pay for the tournament itself, but also if we can utilise that investment to go in any other parts of the game, we want to keep growing and evolving the base. The stronger the roots of the game, sounds really obvious, the more opportunity we’ve got to excel at the top end.”

Why player prize money is being mandated for the first time

The increase in prize money comes with an obligation for participating national associations to allocate between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of the total distributions received to its players.

This is the first obligation of its kind for European women’s competitions and is a recognition of players’ importance to tournament success but, critically, that some women’s football associations have previously withheld money from their players, as was the case following the 2023 World Cup.

The allocation is also an attempt to bring parity for players across Europe. Players who are team-mates at one club who both compete at a major tournament have come to discover that they are afforded different percentages of prize money depending on which nation they play for, which can have negative effects on player morale.

Increased compensation for clubs

European clubs that release players for major tournaments will be compensated at a daily rate of €657 per player thanks to an increase in club benefits payments to €6m.

The sum is an increase from €4.5m in 2022 and represents women’s football’s highest-paid club benefits programme.

The increase should, in theory, bring better collaboration between club and country. The release of players from club duties has been a point of contention in recent years, as discourse around rest and recovery continues. Before the 2023 World Cup, England manager Sarina Wiegman was caught in a club-country tussle over the release of players for pre-tournament preparations.

Clubs will be afforded payments based on 10 preparation days, the total number of days a player participated in the tournament, plus one additional travel day. A club will make a minimum of €13,140 for a player whose national team is eliminated after the group stage. The maximum amount will be €24,309 for a player from a team that was in Group A and reached the final.

The increase of payments to clubs by UEFA will hopefully encourage better dialogue between clubs, though if an association wants to request players earlier than the 10-day preparatory period, they will not have access to the €6m.

Europa Women’s Cup and a new distribution model

It is far from original, but UEFA’s new second-tier club competition finally has a name: the Europa Women’s Cup.

The competition, which will launch from next season and be a two-legged knockout competition, is a step in the right direction as UEFA attempts to confront the issues of competitive balance and jeopardy in its cups.

Its introduction not only provides more opportunity for teams to compete in Europe but supplies an incentive to clubs who perhaps have given up on qualifying for the Champions League spots given the position of stronger teams in their league. The return for clubs who do qualify for the Europa Cup and compete will, theoretically, help narrow competitive gaps in domestic leagues.

The launch of the Europa Cup coincides with the rolling out of a new format for the Champions League, which will adopt an 18-team league phase similar to the men’s competition.

Both changes will be supported by amendments to the financial distribution model, which is funded mostly by the full centralisation of media and sponsorship rights for women’s European competitions, starting this season. This is a major development, as revenue is set to increase 122 per cent compared to previous cycles, according to UEFA, and is seen as a big step towards the women’s game being self-sustaining.

Revenue will be distributed not only to clubs participating in the competitions but also to those who fail to get out of the qualifying stages and even non-participating clubs.

From 2025 to 2027, clubs participating from the league phase of the Champions League onwards will benefit from a total of €18.2m (increasing to €24.1m from 2027 to 2030). Teams eliminated in the qualifying rounds will benefit from an increased pot of €7.7m (increasing to €9.1m from 2027–2030). The pot for clubs competing in the Europa Cup will amount to €5.6m (increased to €6.2m). Non-participating clubs will benefit from a share of €6.2m (increased to €7.3m from 2027–2030).

More work remains to be done, particularly in putting women into higher decision-making positions across the governing body. But these announcements represent steps in the right direction for a game that has, for the decades preceding it, been starved of support.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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