Are Win Bonuses Worth the Trouble?

By: Daryl | February 7th, 2008

Scotalnd players celebrate All credit to Scotland’s national team players, as they’ve decided to continue with a win bonus scheme that only rewards them for actual World Cup 2010 qualification. There’s apparently a pot of £2.5m available to reward the players involved should Scotland qualify for South Africa, but they’ll get not a penny for winning individual games. Scotland’s players had the same deal during their very nearly but not quite Euro 2008 qualification campaign, and received nothing for the two famous victories over France.

So good on ‘em. But I have to ask: is it even worth offering win bonuses to men with plenty of money?

None of the Scotland squad are earning Cristiano Ronaldo cash, but they’re all doing pretty well. The likes of Alan Hutton and Barry Ferguson will never have to eat at McDonald’s again if they don’t want to. So is a win bonus any real incentive? If the goal - World Cup qualification - is more valuable than the money being offered (and I’ve got no doubt that it is) then what’s the point of offering any money at all?

At the other end of the scale, a win bonus theoretically makes more sense for poorer players. But it often produces the opposite of the intended result. Remember Togo at World Cup 2006? Their tournament was more or less derailed by an argument over win bonuses. An argument that continued post-World Cup and contributed to Togo’s failure to qualify for Africa Cup of Nations 2008.

Just recently Zambia made an impressive start to that same tournament, then argued with the FA over win bonuses and promptly lost 5-1 to Cameroon.

So maybe win bonuses matter too much to players who are poor enough to need them, and don’t matter enough to players already rich enough not to care. Togo and Zambia both had their tournaments ruined by a bonus structure intended to provide extra motivation for success while Scotland pulled off two great wins against France that they knew were financially worthless on their own. So are win bonuses really worth the trouble?