The Football Association has announced a significant increase in prize money for the Women’s FA Cup next season. The move comes after Aston Villa manager Carla Ward and Chelsea manager Emma Hayes criticized the difference in prize money between the women’s and men’s competition. The prize money for the winning men’s team is 1.8m while the women’s winner gets £25,000. The runners-up get £900,000 and £15,000 respectively.
“The FA has had a clear plan for women’s football that has seen it become one of the biggest successes across sport in our country. The growth at all levels has been game-changing and we’re incredibly proud of the progress that we have led,” the Football Association said in a statement to announce the increase of prize money of the women’s FA Cup. “To drive this growth we invested over £50m into our initial ‘Gameplan for Growth’ strategy which doubled female participation, delivered professional and semi-professional women’s football and a successful England team.”
“We built on this with even more investment in our ‘Inspiring Positive Change’ strategy that launched last year, with a long-term plan to work with Women’s Super League and Championship clubs to accelerate the growth of audiences and revenues,” the statement added. “This will help make women’s football in England more commercially viable in the future and allow further re-investment. The Women’s FA Cup’s significant development over the last few years is just one example of this growth. Whilst the competition doesn’t yet drive commercial revenue to fund prize money growth, the FA board has agreed on a significant increase in prize money to support the competition’s continued development.”
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