The overall bill for this comes to $271.7 million (£174.7 million/€222.9 million).

In a letter to FIFA members, Jérôme Valcke, secretary general, confirmed that FIFA members would receive an "additional bonus" of $500,000 (£321,000/€410,000), "in connection with the final financial results of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil".

This would be in addition to a $300,000 (£193,000/€246,000) payment to those participating in 2018 World Cup qualifiers which was first alluded to following last week's FIFA Executive Committee meeting in Marrakech.

"Consequently and in summary," Valcke wrote, "this means that in 2015, each member association will be entitled to receive $1,050,000: $250,000 for the 2015 Financial Assistance Programme (FAP); $500,000 as a one-off financial bonus; and $300,000 as support for the preparation of and participation in the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers".

He went on: "This sum is in addition to the first tranche of $250,000 of the bonus that was made available after the 2014 FIFA Congress.

"Therefore, the total one-off contributions made to member associations as a result of the good financial results of the 2014 FIFA World Cup amount to $1,050,000 each plus, as mentioned, the normal 2015 FAP contribution of $250,000, making a grand total of $1,300,000."

The success of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil has led to a financial windfall for the world governing body's Member Associations ©Getty Images

The scale of the payments, at a time when past accounts have suggested the governing body may be poised to swing into deficit, promises to make FIFA's 2014 and 2015 annual reports particularly interesting reading.

According to a detailed budget for 2014,included, somewhat confusingly in the 2012 financial report, budgeted revenue for the year was put at $1.08 billion and investments at $1.41 billion (£907 million/€1.17 billion). Based on what happened in the first three years of the World Cup cycle, both figures in actuality will almost certainly be higher.

Yet the budgeted deficit, based on those numbers, comes out at $330 million (£212 million/€271 million), and that presumably was before allowance was made for bonus payments.

A further FIFA blueprint for 2015-2018 indicates that deficits are possible in 2015 and 2016 as well.

With reserves of some $1.4 billion (£900 million/€1.2 billion), the organisation has the capacity to afford a period in which expenses outstrip revenues.

It is also possible that FIFA has generated enough extra revenue in 2014 and 2015 to allow these payments to be made while remaining in surplus.

However, with a single quadrennial event - the World Cup - still accounting for the vast majority of the organisation's income, retention of a significant reserve is plainly desirable.

News of the FIFA payments coincides with the build-up to next year's Presidential election with doubts emerging over whether Sepp Blatter will stand for a fifth term ©Getty Images

Clarification of the payments comes as rumours have started to swirl relating to next year's Presidential election.

Suggestions have even surfaced to the effect that Sepp Blatter, FIFA's veteran President, might ultimately choose not to run.

No doubt Member Associations, who constitute the electorate, will have a wide variety of reasons for deciding who to back.

One feels bound, nonetheless, to observe that the distribution of more than a quarter of a billion dollars in funds in the manner outlined, and at a time when FIFA's costs have been projected for a time to outstrip revenues, seems difficult to construe as the act of a leadership preparing to throw in the towel.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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