COSAFA Women's Championship: R20K For Individual Award Winners, No Money For Teams

The Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) has announced that teams that participated in this year’s COSAFA Women’s Championship will not receive prize money, except for individual award winners. In a statement seen by Pindula News, COSAFA cited the limited commercial funding for women’s football compared to the men’s game as the reason. The council said costs of hosting the tournament, including travel and accommodation, remain high, leaving no room in the budget for team prize money. Read the statement:

PRIZE MONEY FOR THE COSAFA WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP

COSAFA has received numerous enquiries around prize money for players and teams that competed at the recent COSAFA Women’s Championship which was held in Gauteng.

There will be prize money of R20,000 for the individual award winners, Malawi forward Temwa Chawinga, who won both the Player of the Tournament award and the Golden Boot as top-scorer, and Golden Glove winner Cynthia Shongwe from Zimbabwe.

However, as has been the case in all previous years bar one exceptional case where a sponsor came on board to carry the cost, there will be no prize money for the teams.

It is a global reality that women’s football does not command the same commercial funding as the men’s game, and while COSAFA is working extremely hard to change this in our region, we are not there yet.

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The costs of hosting an event such as the COSAFA Women’s Championship, which draws teams from 11 countries in addition to the host, is extraordinary in terms of air travel, accommodation and other key logistics.

These costs remain the same as for our men’s events, but with lower revenue for our women’s tournament, there is simply no space in our budget framework for prize money.

We hope that in the future we will have more commercial partners to assist in this regard and as an organisation COSAFA is working extremely hard to turn this into a reality.

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