FIFA Club Benefits Programme

Nearly $5m could be split between 17 Scottish clubs

The FIFA Club Benefits Programme was a topic explained in detail on this website in an article before the tournament started. In short, FIFA pays clubs for releasing their players for the World Cup. The tournament payment is based on a daily rate, so the final amount depends on how long each player’s nation remains in the competition.

Now that Norway have been eliminated from the tournament, the last man standing from the 21 representatives of the Scottish Premiership was Thelo Aasgaard. We can now estimate the final FIFA payments for each club, and you can read the previous article here if you require a fuller explanation:

$4.5m to be paid to the clubs of the Scottish World Cup Squad

FIFA has also introduced payments to clubs for releasing players for World Cup qualifiers. This is the first time qualifier payments have been included in the programme. For qualifying matches, the payment is calculated on a fixed per-game basis rather than the daily rate used during the tournament itself.

The figures below are estimates based on FIFA’s published distribution principles. But the final amounts may differ for several reasons:

• The daily rate has not yet been finalised:

  • It may increase slightly depending on the number of out-of-contract players at the tournament. If a player is not contracted to a club, no club payment is made for that player and the money returns to the central pot.

• Individual loan agreements are negotiated separately by clubs.:

  • For example, Kilmarnock may have an agreement with Rangers to receive part of the Findlay Curtis payment for his Scotland call-up. On the flip side, Rangers may also have an agreement with Marseille relating to Derek Cornelius’ payment. These are not disclosed, and so for the purposes of these graphics, I have awarded 50% of the Cornelius payment to Rangers, and split the Curtis payment 50% between Kilmarnock and Rangers - however these figures could be inaccurate. I have not looked into how any other loan agreement may effect these payment, but I have broken Lawrence Shankland’s payment into a Hearts share and a Rangers share; but again this split could be inaccurate.

• There may also be splits with previous clubs.

  • This is not stated in the publicly available FIFA distribution principles, but there could be mechanisms that mean the full payment does not go to the club holding the player’s registration at the time of the tournament. An SPFL club director I spoke to thought the payments may be split three ways, for example a third to the club that held the player’s registration in the previous season.

Using the information currently available, and the estimated daily rate, the expected payments covering 17 Scottish clubs and 93 players:

Celtic

Rangers