Because Fifa pays: DFB does not give the women’s team an extra World Cup bonus.

The most important

• The DFB will not pay the women’s national team any extra bonus for the World Cup.
• At this year’s tournament, the bonuses will be paid out directly by Fifa for the first time.
• The premiums at the men’s World Cup are still significantly higher.

Even if Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz personally advocated equal bonus payments for national players: the German women footballers will again not come close to the sums recently awarded by the DFB for the men’s national team at this World Cup.

The German Football Association has declared the negotiations with the women’s team over – because Fifa is paying the money directly to the players for the first time.

DFB does not pay the women’s team any extra bonus for the World Cup

The selection of national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg will not receive any prize money from the DFB beyond the premiums from the world association. This was confirmed by the Association of German Press Agency.

Captain Alexandra Popp and Co. would each receive record prize money of around a quarter of a million euros for a World Cup triumph in Australia and New Zealand – but last year the DFB offered 400,000 euros for the German men for a triumph in Qatar .

In the debate about equal pay (“Equal Pay”), Scholz tweeted during the EM 2022 in England with a clear request to the German association: “It’s 2022. Women and men should be paid equally.”

The SPD politician also continued to campaign for this during a visit to the new DFB campus in Frankfurt/Main and at an international match. In some other countries, “equal pay” has been common for some time – the US world champions even went to court for it.

Fifa pays bonuses directly to the players for the first time

Fifa recently announced that for the first time at least 30,000 dollars (around 28,000 euros) will be paid out to each player among women – almost directly to their accounts. The 23 world champions will each receive $270,000 (€252,000) at the end of the tournament, which runs from July 20th to August 20th, making them more than $6.2 million (around €5.8 million).

In the past, Fifa funds were distributed to the respective national associations, which in turn determined and paid out their prize money for the teams themselves. The associations receive additional payments after the World Cup tournament – the association of future world champions, for example, again over 4 million dollars (a good 3.7 million euros).

The countries whose teams are eliminated after the preliminary round would only have 1.56 million US dollars (around 1.4 million euros) – which the DFB would probably not even cover the costs of the women’s World Cup.

Significant increase in prize money for women

Fifa’s action saves the DFB further negotiations with the team council around Popp. For the players, the suspended amounts are a quantum leap – even if they don’t come close to those of the men: they each received 30,000 euros for reaching the EM final in 2022. There would have been 60,000 for the title.

Many national players had recently emphasized that the debate was primarily about reasonable salaries throughout the Bundesliga and about “equal play”, i.e. the same training conditions.

According to its President Bernd Neuendorf, the latter are now “one to one” for men and women at the DFB. “Of course we’re very happy about that,” said national player Sara Däbritz about the record bonuses. “Nevertheless, the football focus is our priority.”

At the World Cup, Fifa will pay out a total of 110 million US dollars (around 103 million euros) – and thus still significantly less than last time for the men in Qatar: last year there was a total of 440 million dollars (411 million euros).

For the 2027 women’s World Cup – for which the DFB is also applying together with Belgium and the Netherlands – Fifa President Gianni Infantino has set the goal of paying the same bonuses as for the men’s World Cup in 2026.

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