Hupu February 10, 2019 The "Football" newspaper published a survey report on the income of Chinese women's football teams today.
Before 2018, the income of the women's national football team was mainly composed of two main parts: one part was the salary issued by the sports bureau, and part of the remuneration from the club, at the national team level, there was no subsidy or reward, not to mention, but also to increase the risk of many injuries, once injured in the national team, the income at the club level was gone. Therefore, before 2018, there were players who offered to withdraw from the national team, not unpatriotic, but the growing price and meager income comparison, and they also needed to survive and support their parents, and they also had to plan for a long time, some went to participate in entertainment programs hoping to enter the show business circle, and some tried to find ways to meet more business people to invest in opening stores.
The turning point came after the 2018 Asian Games, because the Chinese women's football team showed a very tenacious fighting spirit at the Asian Games and defeated the North Korean women's football team. That scene had a huge impact on the top management of Alipay who were watching the battle at the scene, thus accelerating the pace of signing the cooperation agreement. In fact, it was not accidental that Alipay executives appeared at the Asian Games, but were invited by Du Zhaocai, deputy director of the State Sports Administration, who was in charge of women's football at the time.
Before that game, Du Zhaocai hoped to get a generous and long-term sponsorship for the women's football team, thereby fundamentally improving the survival status of the women's football team and laying a good foundation for future women's football matches in the World Cup, the Asian Games and the Asian Cup. Initially, Alipay executives expressed their hope to sit down after the Asian Games to talk about the cooperation content in detail, but when they saw that the women's football team defeated North Korea with its own hard work, they promised to support the development of Chinese women's football in the form of ten years and 100 million, and finally the cooperation document was signed after the two sides communicated the details after returning home. In order to show sincerity, the Chinese women's football team members were given a quota of more than 100,000 yuan per person on the spot, and all the team members collectively emptied the shopping cart.
It was also from that moment that the women's football team members saw new prospects and hopes for the future development of Chinese women's football, and the leaders and main managers of women's football at the time also promised the women's football team that they would do their best to let the women's football girls get more rewards that matched their efforts. Since then, training for the national team has begun to have daily subsidies, which are higher than the income of some new internationals at the club.
If the income of former Chinese women's football players is divided according to the group, it can be divided into international and non-international footballers; in the international football team level, it can also be divided into core main internationals and general internationals. First of all, the income gap between international footballers and non-international footballers, the same part of them lies in the salary from the local sports bureau system, as long as they do not leave this system, this salary is there, equivalent to they have an iron rice bowl with a salary of several thousand yuan per month, before the professionalization of women's football, the income of women's football girls is indeed dependent on this part, very meager.
The wage income gap between international and non-international footballers is reflected in the club level, generally speaking, the annual salary of women's football international football players is between 1 million and 2 million, if it is the main player of the club, the annual salary is about 300,000-400,000 yuan, and there are also some very young players who cannot play too many games with a monthly salary of several thousand yuan.
However, the gap between international football and non-international women's football players is still focused on the national team subsidy and the national team winning bonus, which will make the income gap between some core national team players and ordinary women's football players far more than the gap between the men's football international football team and the non-international main players in the club. In the case of the women's national team qualifying for the 2019 World Cup group, reaching the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and the Olympic preliminary play-offs before that, these winning bonuses are more than the total income of the women's international footballers in both parts of the club.
Of course, between the international team and the international team, there is also a gap in income, depending on the strength, the status of the national team, if it is only selected for training or the game play time is not much, it is generally about one million per year, if it has been the main force and has a major outstanding performance, it will transition to the highest line.
FIFA's business investigation report, the evaluation of the commercial investment of Chinese women's football is listed as the first, which is based on the refusal of the United States and Germany to disclose clear figures to FIFA's survey, whether it is the first opinion, but the treatment of Chinese women's football is definitely improving year by year, which is a fact that is beyond doubt. In particular, the special financial support for the national team has played a huge role in promoting the special fund support of the national team in ten years.
Compare other countries sideways: In 2019, Emily Johansen, the main centre-back who retired from Everton in England, said in an interview with the media that her career income hovered between 20,000 and 24,000 pounds a year, which is also the average income level of the Premier League women's football league, which is not even as good as the weekly salary of some men's players for 40,000 pounds a week. Since September 2020, the two football associations of England and Brazil have only paid their respective women's football teams the same appearance allowance as the men's football team (about $1300 per game), which was not available before.
The average annual income of Norwegian women's football is about $12,000 to $24,000, and they are very envious of the French women's football league and the German women's football league, which are roughly 100,000 to 150,000 US dollars a year salary standard. In fact, the salary standards of the French and German women's football teams are also insignificant compared to the men's football teams in their own countries, but they are already in the leading position in the world women's football field.
The U.S. women's soccer team is the world's first, and has been winning this throne for several years, the operation of the U.S. women's soccer league is very prosperous, the attendance rate is extremely high, and the commercial value is rising year by year, but the U.S. women's soccer revenue report released in 2021, many players have to do multiple part-time jobs to subsidize their income as players. A former Portland Thorns player named Hamilton said her minimum income was $30,000 a year and $52,500 at the highest, and the truck drivers in the same city she knew earned $70,000 a year.
So many major league women's soccer players choose part-time, a team member named Emily, in addition to playing football, in the morning part-time as a fitness card salesman, a card commission of 25 US dollars, after training or game, in the evening part-time as a children's football coach, so that a year can increase less than 20,000 US dollars in income, but this is already very impressive for women's football players.
The outstanding performance of the American women's football team has a lot to do with their incentive mechanism, the income in the league is meager, more depends on the national team allowance and bonus mechanism stimulation, so that the women's football team must desperately enter the national team, on the one hand, to increase the basic income, the other level is to increase commercial value and visibility, so as to get more income in the commercial field.
The U.S. women's soccer team once filed a lawsuit in federal court for unequal pay for equal work with the men's soccer team, but the lawsuit was dismissed. Because in the eyes of the U.S. judge, although professional women's football players seem to have similar or even more hard work with men's football players, and the commercial value of women's football is also increasing, in fact, the level of top women's football is generally equal to the performance of the 15-18-year-old youth team cultivated under the men's football professional system. The difference in the level of movement of men's and women's football makes the industry itself unable to be equal, which is a common phenomenon in football all over the world, not unique to a certain country.
A sports commentator in the United Kingdom once said that it is not a good phenomenon when referring to the gradual increase in the income of the Chinese women's professional football league and the trend of approaching the ultra-high income level in the world football field: "If you want to destroy a country's football, destroy their ambition, the Chinese men's football team is because it is too easy to make too much money, so that they lose the motivation to challenge themselves upwards, and if the Chinese women's football team also takes this road, then the situation may be as bad as the men's football team." ”
At present, with the continuous increase of national team sponsorship funds and bonuses, the gap between rich and poor players in the professional women's football field has further widened, and the normal selection and failure behavior in the past has made it easy for many players to add more ideas to the choice of head coach because of economic benefits, which is a double-edged sword. If you use it well, the head coach can not do too much game mobilization; if it is not used well, there may be new problems.