The winner of the FIFA World Cup 2026 will receive a record jackpot of $50m, football’s global governing body says.

That figure is up from $42m in 2022 and $38m in 2018. But it is still less than half of what was on offer at the much less hyped FIFA Club World Cup earlier this year.

FIFA said the total prize fund for next year’s World Cup – to be staged in the United States, Canada and Mexico – is $655m, a 50 percent increase on the previous edition in Qatar.

By comparison, the FIFA Club World Cup, which was controversially expanded from seven teams to 32 and shoehorned into the football calendar, had a total prize fund of $1bn. The prize for the winning team was worth up to $125m for a tournament that faced fierce resistance from players and leagues and drew sparse crowds for some matches.

The Club World Cup, also staged in the US, was won by Chelsea.

FIFA has a different distribution model for the two tournaments. The disparity in prize money reflects factors such as clubs overseeing much higher costs through wages than national teams.

Beyond the prize money, further funds are put towards the development of football globally.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the World Cup would be “groundbreaking in terms of its financial contribution to the global football community”.

FIFA approved the prize money for every stage of the World Cup at a meeting of its council in Doha.

The runner-up will receive $33m with $29m and $27m going to the third- and fourth-placed teams, respectively. The lowest prize money will be $9m and all 48 participating nations will get $1.5m to cover what FIFA described as “preparation costs”.

FIFA said, in all, $727m would be distributed to the football federations participating.

It is not known how each nation will distribute the money, but at the last World Cup, French sports daily L’Equipe reported France’s players were in line for a bonus of $586,000 by their federation if they won the trophy. France was ultimately beaten by Argentina in the final.

[Aljazeera]

England will have a review reinstated after the supplier of Snicko technology admitted an operator error may have cost them the wicket of Alex Carey on the opening day of the Adelaide Test.

ESPNcricinfo understands that Brendon McCullum and Wayne Bentley, England’s head coach and team manager respectively, held talks with Jeff Crowe, the match referee, after the close of play to air their grievances. The ECB will also encourage the ICC to review their systems to improve their decision-making processes in future.

TV umpire Chris Gaffaney upheld Ahsan Raza’s on-field “not out” decision after Carey, on 72, flashed at a ball from Josh Tongue outside off stump. There was a clear spike shown on the Real-Time Snickometer (RTS) several frames before the ball had passed the bat. “There’s a clear gap, no spike,” Gaffaney said.

But Carey, who went on to score 106, admitted after play that he thought he had hit the ball, saying he had “a bit of luck” and was “clearly not” a walker. BBG Sports, the supplier of RTS, later suggested that an operator had “selected the incorrect stump mic for audio processing” and took “full responsibility for the error”.

David Saker, England’s bowling coach, said on Wednesday night that the dressing room has harboured concerns about the reliability of RTS all series. “We shouldn’t be talking about this after a day’s play, it should just be better than that,” Saker said. “In this day and age, you’d think the technology is good enough to pick things up like that.”

The ICC’s playing conditions allow player reviews to be reinstated at the match referee’s discretion if a player review “could not properly be concluded due to a failure of the technology”. There is precedent for the decision from England’s tour to India in early 2021, when Ajinkya Rahane was incorrectly given not out in the second Test in Chennai.