Women’s World Cup: FIFA predicts attendance record – 07/19/2023 – Sport

FIFA’s top officials predicted on Wednesday that the Women’s World Cup in New Zealand and Australia would break records for spectators and stadium attendances, a sign of the growth of women’s football.

“The eyes of the world will be here. We hope to reach a quarter of the world’s population, 2 billion people, who will watch at least one match,” said FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura in an interview in Auckland.

“This tournament will be the first women’s World Cup organized by two confederations, the first in the southern hemisphere, the first with 32 teams, eight of them debutants”, added Samoura.

The director assured that tickets sold for this year’s tournament already exceed those for the Cup four years ago, in France, with 1,375,000 already sold and many more available.

“It will be the Women’s World Cup with the biggest crowd”, commented Samoura.

New Zealand media, however, reported low sales of matches in their territory, but not in Australia, the other host country.

For example, 80,000 tickets are already sold out for Australia’s first game against Ireland in Sydney, on Thursday (20), while the opening match between New Zealand and Norway, on the same day, at Auckland’s Eden Park ( with capacity for 50,000 spectators), tickets are still available.

And according to data from the organization, of the more than 1.3 million tickets sold until Wednesday, only 320 thousand correspond to the matches that will be played in New Zealand, including all the first phase of the United States, current champion and big favorite for the classification.

Money, ‘a sensitive issue’

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has also been asked repeatedly about how to ensure that the prizes awarded to players, of US$30,000 (R$144,000) each, reach them, but he avoided answering, arguing that “money is always a delicate subject”.

However, the top hat assured that the entity created for the first time a commercial program “which generated us interesting figures”, of US$ 500 million (R$ 2.4 billion), which allowed us to cover the costs of the tournament.

“It will be a really unique show. A lot of people still believe that women’s football is not a great game, that it’s a bad copy of men’s football, but when they see it they realize it’s fantastic,” said Infantino.

“The level has increased over the last 10 years and the best players are here,” he said.