Sarah Gregorius: FIFPro director says FIFA commitment to equal prize money by 2027 ‘step in right direction’ | Football News

FIFA’s commitment to award equal prize money on the males’s and girls’s World Cups by 2027 is a “step in the right direction”, in accordance to Sarah Gregorius.

But the previous Liverpool and New Zealand striker – who’s now director of worldwide coverage and strategic relations in the ladies’s sport for FIFPro, the gamers’ union – mentioned the settlement was not the “final destination” and that FIFA have to be held to their commitment.

Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, introduced this month that the worldwide governing physique supposed to present equal prize money on the 2026 males’s World Cup and the ladies’s event a 12 months later.

Gregorius informed Sky Sports: “The players made their thoughts and demands very clear and FIFA came to the table and have agreed on terms that the players – and we as FIFPro – can be satisfied with.

“I’ll level out that it is a step in the right route – it is not the ultimate vacation spot. The commitment to a pathway to equality is simply as essential because the equal circumstances and the rise in prize money and the share that may go to gamers in this World Cup.”

FIFA’s transfer got here after FIFPro despatched a letter signed by 150 girls’s nationwide group gamers to FIFA in October calling for equal World Cup prize money.

The money on supply on the 2022 males’s World Cup in Qatar totalled $440m (£357.1m), whereas the prize pot on the 2019 girls’s World Cup in France was simply $30m (£24.3m).

That quantity will rise to $110m (£89.3m) for this summer time’s event in Australia and New Zealand, with $40m (£32.5m) additionally made accessible for group preparation and to golf equipment that launch gamers.

But the 2023 girls’s World Cup will embody 32 groups – up from 24 4 years in the past – and Gregorius mentioned the following steps will likely be about holding “FIFA’s feet to the fire”.

“I suppose it’s getting all of that enshrined in an agreement and getting it down on paper,” said Gregorius. “The devil will be in the detail.

“It’s making sure there is a significant percentage that is guaranteed to players because we know what a difference that will make to all of them.

“Obviously, making sure we can hold FIFA’s feet to the fire on the path to equality. They’ve signalled very good intent but I hope when we get to 2027 we’re making sure we never have to have this conversation again, and that the fight for equality has actually come to an end.”

The 2019 girls’s World Cup drew a worldwide viewers of 1 billion folks however the winners – the USA – had been solely handed $4m (£3.2m) in prize money, whereas Argentina, who gained the 2022 males’s World Cup, claimed $42m (£34m).