It has been billed as the most successful Women’s Asian Cup up to now, but prize cash on the upcoming match in Australia is not going to improve from what was provided by the Asian Soccer Confederation on the final version 4 years in the past.
Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this 12 months, the world’s oldest girls’s nationwide group competitors launched prize cash for the primary time in 2022, distributing US$1.8m among the many nations who completed within the high 4.
However the AFC is not going to supply an even bigger prize pot at this 12 months’s match, which begins on March 1, ignoring a number of participant requests to deal with its stagnation amid a world girls’s soccer increase.
“The AFC acknowledges the significance of accelerating the prize cash of the AFC Girls’s Asian Cup taking part groups, whereas noting that the prize cash for the upcoming version in Australia stays in keeping with earlier editions,” an AFC spokesperson mentioned.
In 2023, the AFC allotted US$14.8m for the lads’s Asian Cup, with all 24 groups – together with the Socceroos – awarded a separate participation price of US$200,000.
A survey performed by international gamers’ union Fifpro after the 2022 version revealed 87% of gamers mentioned enhancements to pay and prize cash had been wanted. Gamers from a majority of this 12 months’s competing groups not too long ago signed an open letter to the AFC requesting session on prize cash, however that session didn’t happen. It’s understood a public marketing campaign is being deliberate calling consideration to the disparity.
The Girls’s Asian Cup is now the lowest-paying continental match on the earth. The 2025 Girls’s European Championships noticed a prize pot of US$47.2m, the 2024 Girls’s African Cup of Nations elevated to US$3.475m, the 2024 Concacaf W Gold Cup allotted US$3.7m, whereas the 2025 Copa America Feminina awarded US$2m.
“The present technique focuses on long-term growth of the ladies’s sport throughout Asia,” the AFC spokesperson mentioned. “Additional, it’s to be famous that the prize fund of all competitions is carefully tied to business revenues equivalent to broadcasting and sponsorships.
“At this stage, the income generated by the AFC Girls’s Asian Cup remains to be rising, and we intention to achieve a sustainable level the place prize cash will increase are backed by business success. We’re actively working to shut this hole by enhancing the visibility and marketability of the ladies’s sport.”
Shoko Tsuji, secretary normal of Fifpro Asia/Oceania, was crucial of AFC’s justification.
“The AFC’s assertion talks about long-term growth and ‘future editions’ … however Australia is internet hosting this match now, and a world-class occasion can’t ask gamers to attend for future enhancements, notably when different areas are investing at a major tempo,” Tsuji mentioned.
“Gamers throughout Asia have already proven the immense potential of the ladies’s sport when given a platform. What’s extra, our analysis signifies this 12 months’s match is ready to be the most important Girls’s Asian Cup ever from a business perspective.
“We imagine the match needs to be handled with the respect its stature deserves, together with respect for the gamers who make it potential.”
The choice sits awkwardly alongside the AFC’s latest girls’s soccer competitors, the Girls’s Asian Champions League. Simply two years in, the membership match had a complete prize pot of US$1.5m apportioned to the winner and runner-up. Each different group was given US$100,000 for making the group stage, with extra awarded the additional they progressed.
The Asian Cup is a part of qualification for each the 2027 Girls’s World Cup and the 2028 Summer season Olympics. The Matildas will face the Philippines, Iran and South Korea within the group stage.
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