Five Ghanaian clubs are to receive over $500,000 from the FIFA Club Benefits Programme as part of rewards for having representatives in the Black Stars squad at the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
A FIFA report, to be released on Thursday morning, reveals that the Ghana Football Association received $565,772.42 to be distributed among the five clubs in Ghana.
Asante Kotoko, Hearts of Oak, King Faisal, Dreams Football Club and Steadfast Football Club are the beneficiaries of the programme.
From the report, Hearts received the highest amount, being $219,008.70 while Kotoko were paid $200,757.97.
The reports also shows Steadfast get $109,504.72. Dreams and King Faisal received $18,250.72 each.
Ghana’s squad for the World Cup included two players from the Ghana Premier League with Danlad Ibrahim (representing Kotoko) and Daniel Afriyie-Barnieh (representing Hearts) making Otto Addo’s final squad list.
King Faisal (Danlad), Steadfast and Dreams (both Fatawu Issahaku) all qualified due to boasting players that played for the Black Stars during the qualifiers for the global showpiece.
The way it works is that each of the 837 footballers is eligible to get a rounded per player daily amount of USD 10,950, regardless of how many minutes they played during the tournament. Ghana stayed at the tournament until the end of the group phase.
The FIFA Club Benefits Programme is an initiative that is designed to recognise the contribution of football clubs during the World Cup periods.
It sees club also get rewarded financially from proceeds from the tournament with the distribution done through member associations to clubs who made their players available for their respective national teams.
The initiative was first introduced ahead of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
The financial reward is given to clubs that the player was registered with during the World Cup qualifiers as well as during the time of the tournament.
The Club Benefits Programme will see USD 209 million distributed to clubs across the world for their player contribution to Qatar 2022.
The same amount was distributed following the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
In comparison, the share of benefits for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil was USD 70 million, which was an increase from USD 40 million allocated for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa.