On December 6, FIFA held the draw for the 2025 Club World Cup in Miami (USA). Accordingly, Messi’s Inter Miami club is the host club in an easy group. At the same time, the prize structure was also revealed to be up to 1.6 billion euros.
At the draw, Messi and Inter Miami fell into an easy group A, and were considered likely to win one of the two spots in the round of 16, when they were in the same group with opponents such as Palmeiras (Brazil), Porto (Portugal) and Al Ahly (Egypt).
The opening match of the Club World Cup, Inter Miami vs Al Ahly at the Hard Rock Stadium, will be a good condition to go far if Messi and his teammates get their first win.
In other groups, Group B with PSG, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo (Brazil) and Seattle Sounders (USA) is a pretty tough group.
Group C includes Bayern Munich, Auckland City (New Zealand), Boca Juniors (Argentina) and Benfica (Portugal). Group D includes Flamengo (Brazil), Chelsea, Esperance Sportive de Tunisie (Tunisia) and Club Leon (Mexico).
Group E includes River Plate (Argentina), Urawa Red Diamonds (Japan), CF Monterrey (Mexico) and Inter Milan (Italy). Group F: Fluminense (Brazil), Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Ulsan HD (South Korea) and Mamelodi Sundowns FC (South Africa).
Meanwhile, Man City and Juventus are in Group G with Wydad AC (Morocco) and Al Ain (UAE). Championship candidate Real Madrid is in Group H with Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia), Pachuca (Mexico) and FC Salzburg (Austria).
The new Club World Cup with 32 participating clubs will take place from June 15 to July 13, 2025 at 12 stadiums across the United States. With 8 groups drawn, each group has 4 teams, the 2 teams ranked first and second in each group will qualify for the round of 16 and compete for the championship.
Messi and Inter Miami have avoided meeting the strongest opponents in Europe, with only FC Porto considered to be on par with two opponents from Brazil, Palmeiras and Al Ahly (Egypt). Therefore, they have a very high chance of advancing to the round of 16 and will receive a huge prize from FIFA.
According to AS (Spain), FIFA plans to structure the total prize money for the first Club World Cup up to 1.6 billion euros. This plan is likely to come true.
FIFA has just signed a television rights agreement for the tournament with DAZN channel worth up to 1 billion euros, according to a source from RMC channel (France).
In addition, in recent times, the world football body has also signed high-value commercial contracts with leading partners. These will also be sponsors for the 2026 World Cup, thereby making the Club World Cup’s prize money extremely generous and not a problem for FIFA to worry about as previously reported.
AS also revealed that FIFA plans to give all clubs participating in the Club World Cup 50 million euros each to participate. Then the prize money will be divided according to the results of the competition and achievements in the tournament. However, European clubs are protesting this type of equal prize money. They want FIFA to give more prizes to European clubs, up to 70% of the total prize money, including the money for television rights.
“In response to these demands, FIFA is reviewing and negotiating with the European Club Association (ECA), before officially announcing the Club World Cup prize structure. But certainly, participating clubs will receive an amount of no less than 50 million euros as originally planned by FIFA,” AS concluded.
