When twenty-four Matildas players put their names to a formal letter last December requesting equal prize money at the Women's Asian Cup, they weren't asking for a gift. They were asking for a basic acknowledgement that the tournament they compete in is worth taking seriously. The Asian Football Confederation has answered, and its answer is no.
The letter, submitted on 22 December 2025 and co-signed by captain Sam Kerr alongside players from India, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Uzbekistan, called on the AFC to align the Women's Asian Cup prize pool with its men's equivalent. The players also requested a guaranteed 30 per cent of prize money be paid directly to competing players, as well as equal conditions and shared legacy initiatives for women's football development across Asia and Oceania.
In response, AFC general secretary Datuk Seri Windsor John wrote to the general secretary of FIFPro Asia/Oceania, Ms Shoko Tsuji, on 16 January, acknowledging that the confederation had made "significant investments in women's football" but maintaining that "revenues from the women's competition are still not able to fund all the activities." He also redirected responsibility to individual member federations, urging them to address player conditions according to their own circumstances.
The numbers sitting behind that response make for uncomfortable reading. According to a report commissioned by FIFPro Asia/Oceania and conducted by sports intelligence agency Gemba in early 2025, the 2026 Women's Asian Cup is projected to generate as much as US$82.4 million in revenue, not including government support. That figure includes US$31.1 million in sponsorship and US$11 million from media rights. Former Matilda Sarah Walsh, the tournament's chief operating officer, confirmed as of late December 2025 that the event had already attracted unprecedented sponsor support.
Against that backdrop, the prize pool on offer is US$1.8 million, identical to the 2022 tournament and restricted to the top four finishers only. There is no participation bonus. By comparison, the AFC allocated US$14.8 million for the men's Asian Cup, with all 24 teams, including the Socceroos, receiving a separate participation fee of US$200,000. The 2025 Women's Euros, for context, distributed a prize pool equivalent to around AU$47.2 million.
The AFC's own budget for the 2026 women's tournament has grown significantly, rising from AU$7.7 million in 2022 to AU$21.7 million. That is a genuine improvement, and the confederation deserves credit for it. But it still falls well short of the AU$36.7 million spent on the 2023 men's Asian Cup. The gap is not closing fast enough for the players who are competing now.
There is a legitimate counter-argument here, and it would be dishonest to dismiss it. Women's football competitions do generate less revenue than their men's equivalents in most markets, including across much of Asia. Structuring prize pools around projected rather than confirmed income carries financial risk, particularly for a confederation that must also fund football development across some of the region's poorer nations. The AFC's position, while frustrating, is not entirely without logic.
The harder problem is what happens to the money that does exist. Under the Matildas' agreement with Football Australia, players receive 40 per cent of prize money if they win and 33 per cent for lesser finishes, meaning a title-winning player would take home roughly AU$21,000. That is a negotiated outcome, however modest it may seem. Players from many other Asian nations have no such agreement in place and could, in theory, win the tournament and see none of the prize money flow through to them at all.
This is precisely the inequity that FIFA moved to address before the 2023 Women's World Cup, prescribing a minimum 30 per cent player share of prize money. The AFC has not adopted the same standard, and Windsor John's letter suggests it has no immediate intention to do so, placing responsibility instead on individual member associations to sort out their own arrangements.
As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, the players' letter represented one of the most coordinated cross-national advocacy efforts in women's football in this region. Whether it ultimately shifts the AFC's position may depend less on the strength of the argument, which is considerable, and more on whether commercial momentum continues to build around the women's game to the point where the revenue argument becomes impossible to sustain.
The prize money gap is real, the revenue projections are significant, and the players making the case are among the best in the world. The AFC's response is not unreasonable on its own narrow financial terms, but it struggles to hold up against a projected nine-figure revenue tournament paying out less than two cents in the dollar to the athletes who make it worth watching. Reasonable people can weigh those competing considerations and still disagree about the right pace of change. What is harder to argue is that the current arrangement reflects the true value of the competition.