• FIFA Women’s World Cup Club Benefits Programme is a newly created fund linked to the FIFA Women’s World Cup
• The programme is to reward eligible clubs with additional funding
• FIFA has started the distribution process to releasing and training clubs for all participating players in France 2019

“France 2019 was a watershed moment for women’s football,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino. When the US team lifted the trophy in Lyon, the ground-breaking FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019™ came to a spectacular close. With a broadcast viewing figure across the globe of 1.12 billion, record crowds filling stadiums and millions of new women’s football fans engaging on social media – the tournament was resounding proof that women’s football is on the rise.

The stars of the tournament were the players, who showcased their physical prowess, football skills and athletic ability to the world. Each and every one of those players has spent years developing their craft and as many in football will tell you, it’s in the training and playing with clubs, where the core development of a player takes place.

With this in mind, the first-ever FIFA Women’s World Cup Club Benefits Programme was launched before the tournament to reward those clubs who have contributed to the on-field success of this summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in France.

The programme consists of a fund designed to reward clubs for providing players with a professional football pathway, which aims to encourage and incentivise football clubs to continue developing talent in the women’s game and in turn, underlining FIFA’s commitment to help grow the women’s game by providing more direct funding to clubs that have invested in development of players.

In close collaboration with its member associations, FIFA has identified the beneficiary clubs through the gathering of historical participation data of female players and has begun the process of distributing funding to eligible clubs.

Eligible clubs are those affiliated to FIFA member associations in which the participating players from France 2019 were registered during the competition and the ones that have trained the players from the age of 12 to 22. Information on the clubs that have benefitted from the FIFA Women’s World Cup Club Benefits Programme 2019 will be finalized by February 2020.

Speaking on the introduction of the first ever FIFA Women’s World Cup Benefits Programme, Sarai Bareman, Chief Women’s Football Officer for FIFA, said:

“This initiative is a fantastic way to incentivise and reward clubs for their work in developing female players, whilst sharing the success of the FIFA Womens World Cup with the grassroots community.

“It has been a very interesting exercise from a global perspective as we have had to gather an extensive amount of historical data on the players. In some cases this has not been easy due to lack of formal registration systems in the women’s game, particularly when we have to track a player’s club history to the age of 12 – for some players this is more than 25 years ago.

“At the same time it’s going to be brilliant to see how some of those grassroots clubs will invest the funds and I hope it will make a big positive impact for many of them”.

For more information on the FIFA Women’s World Cup Club Benefits Programme please click here.