Players from the Women’s Championship club Lewes have written an open letter calling for equal FA Cup prize money before their quarter-final against Manchester United.
The letter highlights the huge gap in prize money between the men’s and women’s competitions. Lewes have received £45,000 for winning three ties to get this far, whereas the men’s teams who entered at the third round have been paid £450,000. Women’s clubs receive no money for an FA Cup game being broadcast by the BBC, which is showing the Lewes tie on Sunday, but men’s teams will each be paid £200,000 for their televised quarter-finals.
The letter, seen by the Guardian and published on Tuesday, is addressed to Karen Carney, who is leading the government’s future of women’s football review, and encourages the public to pledge support. It says equal prize money would transform the women’s game in terms of wages, facilities, equipment, medical care, staffing and travel costs.
“We’ve earned £45,000 for the club but if we were men we would have earned £450,000; I was shocked to know that that was the difference,” the Lewes midfielder Lauren Heria said. “We are happy the prize fund increased by £3m this year and we’ve had more money coming in from the Cup but still, comparatively, it is a small increase compared to where the men are at.”
In March last year the Football Association announced prize money for the Women’s FA Cup would increase about seven-fold, from £428,915 to just under £3m. However, the men’s prize pot received an uplift of £3.9m, from £15.9m to £19.8m, widening the gap.
“I’m fully aware we’re gonna get back: ‘Well, it increased to three million this year, you should be happy with that,’” Heria said. “The thing that I love about Lewes is they will never tell us to settle, whether that’s on the pitch or off the pitch. It is always: ‘No, you can expect more of yourselves and you can expect more of the club and more of society.’”
For Lewes, the difference in prize money is the difference between covering costs and transforming their fortunes and future. Lewes, the first club in the world to pay their men’s and women’s teams equally, have long campaigned for equal FA Cup prize money but this latest call is being led by the players.
“This is the first time it is from players,” the club captain, Rhian Cleverly, said. “This is Loz’s [Heria’s] idea. She came up with the idea of writing a letter, she’s our Lotte Wubben-Moy, and we’ve just tried to support her as best as we can because we all live this day-in day-out. We understand what our friends are going through in different teams and clubs.”
Heria had been inspired by the letter instigated by the England and Arsenal defender Wubben-Moy that pushed for equal access to school sports and was sent to the Tory leadership hopefuls after the Lionesses’ Euros win last summer. When the announcement came last week that the government was meeting the team’s demands, everything Lewes had been planning felt more possible.
“We were totally inspired by that,” the defender Nat Johnson said. “For us, a bit of this letter was about education and visibility but to now know that that actually can potentially lead to physical change just lifted why we want to do this.”
Cleverly said: “Their letter was just powerful. We literally had their letter as a template, and we’d go back and go: ‘What did the Lionesses do? If that worked for them then that’s what we need to replicate in some of the things that we’re doing in our letter.’ We’ll be playing against some of them on Sunday. That’s really powerful. We’re fighting against each other on Sunday but we’re fighting for the same things off the pitch and that’s just to improve women’s football in general.”
Heria said they had addressed the letter to Carney – “a fantastic ally” –because as head of the review she has the “power to make change” which would “develop the sport and have a huge impact on the pyramid”.
An FA spokesperson said the Women’s FA Cup had “record levels of investment into the competition” and “our primary focus is to attract new audiences to the competition with live matches on free-to-air television with the BBC. We are always looking to make further improvements and investment across the women’s game to help it thrive in the future.”
