Women’s World Cup breaks Olympic viewership record

The Women’s World Cup continues to break records and set a new level of success for women’s football around the world. If in Australia, one of the co-hosts of the tournament, the good performance of the national team has been motivating historical audiences, in New Zealand, which also acts as host country, the disappointing result of the national team did not diminish the interest of the local population for the competition.

In Australia, the unprecedented success of the Matildas – they have never reached a World Cup semi-final – has turned football into a national passion. The quarterfinal game against France was the most watched sporting event in the country since the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

More than 7 million people watched the tense penalty shootout, which featured 20 penalties, and the surprising ranking of the Australian team. The tournament is already historic. In the group stage alone, 1.222 million spectators went to the stadiums, with an average of more than 25 thousand people per game. These numbers represent a 29% increase over the 2019 World Cup in France at that stage of the competition alone.

the match between Spain and Sweden, valid for the semifinal of the World Cup, which took place last Tuesday, the 16th, was watched by 43,217 fans at Eden Park, in Auckland. The amount is the maximum capacity of the stadium and equals the record for the largest attendance recorded in a soccer game in the country, whether in the men’s or women’s modality. The historic mark had already been reached at the 2023 World Cup during the quarterfinals between Japan and Sweden.

“This tournament represented a colossal shift in the way football, especially women’s football, is viewed in New Zealand,” said Andrew Pragnell, chief executive of New Zealand Football. According to FIFA calculations, over the course of the tournament, around 700,000 people watched the matches in New Zealand.