FA Cup: Why is it time for prize money to be equal for women and men?

This weekend is the Women’s FA Cup second round, and everyone is hoping that with fair winds, they can make it to Wembley – well, we can dream, can’t we?

In 2017, Lewes Football Club, where I am a director, became the first – and still the only – professional or semi-professional club in the country to equally resource its women’s and men’s teams.

Since then, thanks to the Football Association’s central grants and commercial revenue shares, our women’s team has sometimes received a greater level of support – commensurate with its higher league position. In other words, moving from Equality FC to an equity position.

Since 2019, we have also been campaigning for equal FA Cup prize money for women’s and men’s competitions – not as a slogan, but as a strategy.

If the FA Cup is truly, as it claims, “the best equalizer in the game”, then it is time for finances to catch up with the fairy tale.

For a men’s club, a win in the second round of the FA Cup is worth £79,500. For women the price is just £8,000 – a difference of £71,500.

In the first round the difference is £41,750, while in the third round it is £86,500. Same game, same rules, same competition, same knockout system, same governing body – but a different value is placed on the players.

Let’s leave behind the usual excuses – “business reality”, “revenue gap”, “it’s complicated”.

No, it’s not. The English Football Association decides the value of the prizes for both competitions. You can easily make them equal tomorrow – all you need is the desire to do so.

It is too easy and too lazy to dismiss the call for equality, as some people do, by pointing to crowd sizes and broadcast revenues. Yes, attendance for men’s matches is higher, and yes, men’s TV rights are currently worth more.

But the FA does not take a share of gate receipts, so this is an irrelevant argument when discussing equal prize money. Because the FA is publicly committed to redistribution, there is ultimately no valid justification for maintaining unequal prize money.

The FA has in the past chosen to ignore our requests for clarification and engagement, but it is positive that it has recently begun to be more receptive.

The irony is that the Football Association knows how to “deliver equality”. Since 2020, the England women’s and men’s national teams have been paid the same match fees and bonuses. This principle – equal pay for equal performance – has already become a policy at St George’s Park.

The FA’s ‘Reach to the Top: Women’s and Girls’ Games Strategy 2024-2028′ also pledges to ‘create equal opportunities’ and ‘build strong, high-quality competition structures’.