Often described as the pinnacle of the sport, the FIFA World Cup is an almost unimaginable operation. There are elements of it that do not even cross the minds of the fans, which is more than fair enough.
That was arguably even more so the case ahead of the 2022 Qatar World Cup because as well as the football itself, there was a huge amount of focus on the morality of the tournament, the host country and the timing of the tournament.
One element of running a World Cup that gets less coverage is the money that FIFA shells out so that players can be released from their clubs to take part, given it is a disruption to the time players are contracted to be at their clubs. This was a much bigger issue for the 2022 World Cup given it took place in the winter, midway through the season for many confederations.
In one massive document, FIFA have revealed how things worked financially for the 2022 World Cup.
How does FIFA calculate the figures?
The FIFA Club Benefits Programme is the way that FIFA financially rewards clubs and 'acknowledges the profound impact that they have in helping to make the FIFA World Cup the premier sports competition in the world'.
In total, $209m has been forked out by FIFA to be split in a very specific way between 440 clubs all around the world. There is more to it for the clubs than just releasing players, they need to register for the programme first. The $209m is also shared with clubs where the players were registered in the two years leading up to the final tournament, so basically the qualification stage.
In terms of the calculation, the total $209m is divided by the total number of days (including qualification) that all of the participating players spent at the 2022 World Cup. This results in $10,950 per player per day. That figure is then multiplied by the number of days that each player spent at the final competition in Qatar, starting on the day of their release and ending on the day following the last match of their team. Whether they played or not in any given match does not matter.
How much did each confederation receive?
One of the ways in which the figures can be broken down is to look at how much each confederation earned. The six federations are UEFA (Europe), Concacaf (North America), Conmebol (South America), CAF (Africa), AFC (Asia) and OFC (Oceania).
The following shows how much money was sent to what number of clubs from each federation.
Which club received the most from FIFA?
As the table shows, the majority of the money ends up going to UEFA clubs as Europe is where the majority of the best players in the world go to play their football. That means that when it comes to the top-earning clubs from the 2022 World Cup, Europe dominates.
The team that earned the most money in the world from this tournament was Manchester City, which is perhaps not a surprise as it means they have more players in their squad than anyone else that managed to go very far into the World Cup, as well as just having the most players good enough to be called up by their nation.
Below are the five clubs that earned the most from their players at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Top receiving clubs from the Premier League
There was money to be earned for all of the top clubs in Europe but as you might expect with the quality of players there, the Premier League is where a lot of money went. We already know that Manchester City received more than anyone else, but which other teams made up the top 10 Premier League earners from the 2022 World Cup?
Comparison with the 2018 World Cup
As part of the confirmation of the figures, FIFA provided a comparison of how the 2022 World Cup differed to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. There were more eligible clubs and a bigger amount of money per player per day for the 2022 tournament.
In terms of the split of the money between each confederation, the results were very similar. AFC got 1% more in 2022, CAF got 1% less, Concacaf got 2% more, Conmebol got 2% less, the OFC did not feature in 2018 and UEFA got the same 76%.
This article was originally published on 90min as How much elite clubs earned from releasing players for 2022 World Cup.