The Women’s World Cup has hit a major milestone, with 500,000 tickets sold for an event that FIFA’s chief women’s officer insists is further proof Australia and New Zealand’s timezone should no longer be considered a weakness when it comes to hosting major football tournaments.
Fans from 132 countries, the global governing body says, have secured tickets and will be travelling for the first FIFA competition held either wholly or jointly in Australia since the 1993 World Youth Championship.
It is on track to break all sorts of records in international women’s football, with this year’s edition — the first in an expanded 32-team format — poised to break the 1.1 million overall attendance record set at France 2019. Those ambitions will be assisted by the soon-to-be-confirmed shift of the tournament’s opening match in Australia on July 20, between the Matildas and Ireland, from Sydney’s Allianz Stadium to the 83,500-seat Accor Stadium, as reported last week by this masthead.
The only real snag in preparations to date has been FIFA’s concerns about the value of the rights bids put forward by European broadcasters for the tournament, which will be televised in Australia by the Seven Network and paid streaming service Optus Sport.
Unrest regarding the Women’s World Cup, which will be shown in Europe in early-morning timezones and at an apparently unfavourable time of year for broadcasters, led to wild rumours last year that the whole tournament could be postponed, which were quickly shut down by organisers.
At the Women’s World Cup draw held in Auckland in October, FIFA president Gianni Infantino slammed as “unacceptable” some broadcast offers made by networks from countries such as the UK, Italy, Germany and France, who for the first time have to buy separate rights for the women’s tournament, which were previously bundled together with the men’s version.
Tickets for the Women’s World Cup are selling like hotcakes, according to FIFA.Credit:Getty
Infantino said some of the bids were “100 times less” than those made for the men’s World Cup and accused networks of hypocrisy in pushing FIFA for equality while failing to put their money where their mouths are.
Such concerns about the timezones were one of the main reasons why Australia’s bid to host last year’s men’s World Cup was ultimately doomed: former FIFA boss Sepp Blatter said as much in 2018, telling author Bonita Mersiades in her book Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way that Australia was “never” a chance because it wouldn’t be able to generate enough TV money. The same issue looms large again as Football Australia contemplates another attempt for the World Cup in 2034, possibly with New Zealand or Indonesia, or both, as co-hosts — although a successful Women’s World Cup would surely help allay any fears.
While FIFA chief women’s officer Sarai Bareman provided no update on broadcast rights when asked in an interview to mark the tournament’s ticketing milestone, she did say those timezone-related criticisms no longer held water.
“Football is a global sport. FIFA has 211 member associations. They’re in the northern hemisphere, they’re in the southern hemisphere, they’re right across every time zone,” Bareman said.
TOP 10 TICKET BUYERS FOR WOMEN’S WORLD CUP
- Australia
- New Zealand
- United States of America
- England
- Qatar
- Germany
- China PR
- Canada
- Republic of Ireland
- France
Source: FIFA
“The popularity of the game — not just women’s football, but their game in general — we saw with Qatar, it transcends things like difficult timezones. People are going to get up at any time in the morning to watch it, and people will travel.
“One of the barriers to women’s football growing is a lack of resources around the globe. We know if we can unlock the commercial value of the Women’s World Cup, that that revenue flows back into the women’s game and will lift everybody. It’s really important that [commercial partners] see and understand this is a really valuable product, and the numbers and the data back it up.
“We’ve seen some really, really great indications of travelling fans who are interested, that want to come down under … it’s outstripped the ticket sales in France within the same time period, and France was already, for us, a huge milestone.”
Aside from the co-hosts, China, Germany, the USA, England and Ireland are the countries with the most fans thus far who have committed to travel for the Women’s World Cup, according to FIFA — and Bareman said the flow-on effect for the sport here will be huge.
“We saw it with France. We’ve seen it with the Women’s Euro last year. The impact of a World Cup in a country and a region is so big,” she said.
“There were 850,000 women and girls in England who laced up their boots after the World Cup in France. We saw numbers like that all over the place.
“Attendances in leagues and stadiums went up massively after the Women’s World Cup in France, commercial deals were signed, individual player endorsements … all football stakeholders — the leagues, the clubs, everyone that’s involved from elite right down to grassroots in Australia and New Zealand — we all need to stand in a state of readiness to be able to deal with and receive the massive momentum that will come off this event.”
Watch every match of the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League on Stan Sport. Returns for the Round of 16, with all the action streaming ad-free, live and on demand from February 15.
