The FA Cup, in its 141st edition since its inception in 1871, is one of the main competitions on the English football calendar and the oldest national knockout competition in the world.
The tournament is open to all clubs in the top 10 levels of sport in England, with 124 teams participating in the first round, including 92 from the first four levels of professional play. We are now in the third round of the 2021-22 FA Cup which kicks off on the weekend of Friday January 7th with the Premier League and Championship teams entering the fray.
Given the long tradition of the competition, simply lifting the FA Cup trophy represents a professional achievement for most players. The automatic berth in the following season’s Europa League group stage is an added bonus.
But there are also major prize money at stake for the winner of the tournament. Here’s the breakdown of the cash at stake for the clubs in the competition.
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2022 FA Cup cash prizes
A Premier League team that enters the third round and wins the FA Cup would give that club a total of $ 4,625,000. All blessing.
The huge amount of money comes simply from reaching the final, where teams pay first to win their semi-final and then again if they win or lose the final. So a victory in the semifinals guarantees a double payday regardless of the outcome of the title match.
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Below is the full breakdown of prize money per round for men’s clubs, based on the official FA statement .
These payouts are the same as last season’s total, and are lower than in the 2019-20 edition of the tournament, in which the final winners won $ 4,800,000 for the victory at Wembley alone. The FA explained in 2020 that prize values were falling due to the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Breakdown of bonuses for winning the FA Cup in 2022
| Round | Receiving clubs | Pay per club |
|---|---|---|
| 1st round winners | 40 | $ 30,000 |
| 2nd round winners | twenty | $ 46,000 |
| 3rd round winners | 32 | $ 111,000 |
| Fourth round winners | sixteen | $ 122,000 |
| 5th round winners | 8 | $ 244,000 |
| Quarterfinal winners | 4 | $ 488,000 |
| Semi-final losers | two | $ 610,000 |
| Semi-final winners | two | $ 1,220,000 |
| Runner-up | one | $ 1,220,000 |
| Champion | one | $ 2,440,000 |
FA Cup door receipts and split ticket revenue
The FA Cup 2021-22 Official Tournament Rules consider how ticket revenue is divided between clubs. The big payday of the games is not only enjoyed by the local team that is chosen to serve as host.
The Football Association requires that both clubs participating in a match divide their net ticket revenues equally until the quarterfinals. The only time this 50-50 division changes is when a club outside of the Premier League or Football League (Championship, League One, League Two) plays against a club from the top four tiers. In that case, the division is 55-45 favoring the team outside of the top four divisions.
When it comes to the semi-finals and the final, which are usually held at London’s Wembley Stadium, these events are handled differently.
Participating clubs do not receive a portion of the ticket sales for the FA Cup final, but they do receive a portion of the ticket sales for the semi-finals:
- the first 5.5% of the net income from the semifinals is claimed by the FA for distribution to the affiliated associations;
- then the four semi-finalist clubs shared 58.5% of what was left evenly.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.