SYDNEY, Aug 20 (Reuters) - England and Spain kicked off the final of the Women's World Cup on Sunday, capping off a tournament that has broken attendance and TV records and raised hopes of a surge in interest for the women's game.
Co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, the ninth edition of the global showpiece event was the first to be held in the southern hemisphere and has already broken attendance records.
While local interest ebbed when Australia exited in the semi-finals, some 2 million fans will have passed through the gates in nine host cities after Sunday's final kicked off at 8 p.m. (1000 GMT).
Thousands of fans were already milling around Stadium Australia in Sydney hours before kick-off on Sunday, with troupes of drummers and stilt walkers creating a festival atmosphere.
England and Spain are both making their first appearance at a Women's World Cup final, with England not prevailing in a men's tournament since 1966.
"I feel happy, excited, but very nervous, because we've had a lot of letdowns in the last 50 years," said England fan Michael Khoodriuth.
Australia's semi-final loss to England on Wednesday drew an average of 7.13 million viewers on the channels of local broadcaster Seven Network, the highest viewership ever recorded by research firm OzTAM, which launched in 2001.
Matildas matches sold out months in advance, and organisers expect the average attendance to overtake 30,000 once all 64 matches are completed.
The last Women's World Cup in France four years ago attracted more than 1.1. million fans to 52 matches with an average crowd of 21,756.
Demand was weaker in New Zealand, whose team went out in the group stages. FIFA gave away thousands of tickets and some games attracted as few as 7,000 fans, although White Ferns matches broke records for a soccer crowd in the country.
FUNDING GAP
Australia's players, who lost 2-0 in a third-place playoff match to Sweden on Saturday, will earn $165,000 each in prize money for this tournament, more than 300 times the A$750 ($480) they received for a quarter-final appearance in 2015.
But at the grassroots level, the sport needs more resources, Matildas striker Sam Kerr said after the loss to England on Wednesday.
"We need funding in our development, we need funding in our grassroots," she said.
"We need funding, you know, we need funding everywhere."
The Matildas' standout World Cup campaign has led to calls for more support to women's soccer in Australia, where it lags more popular football codes like rugby league and Australian rules.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded on Saturday by promising A$200 million for women's sport in the wake of the Matildas' run to the semi-finals.
Albanese said the money would be used to improve sports facilities for women and girls, with soccer tipped to receive "significant resourcing".
The government also wants to ensure women's sporting events are available on free-to-air television, after criticism that most World Cup games not involving Australia were behind a paywall.
Women's soccer has also confronted a variety of challenges involving finalists England and Spain, who will both be chasing a first world title in Sydney on Sunday.
Women were banned from official facilities in England, the home of the game, until 1970, and have long lagged the men's team in interest and funding, although that began to change after the Lionesses won the European championship last year.
The Spanish team, meanwhile, has been rocked by a locker room dispute with coach Jorge Vilda and the Spanish football federation, with some of their best players absent from the tournament as a result.
($1 = 1.5618 Australian dollars) he FIFA W
Keyword | KD | Volume ↓ | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
inter miami | 55 | 43K | 2 days |
inter miami vs barcelona | 2 | 22K | 2 days |
inter miami vs. barcelona | 3 | 7.7K | 1 day |
barcelona vs inter miami | 8 | 6.6K | 1 day |
inter miami - barcelona | 9 | 6.0K | about 22 hours |
inter miami stadium | 31 | 5.4K | about 7 hours |
messi inter miami | 4 | 4.3K | 1 day |
inter miami fc |
omen's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's international governing body. The competition has been held every four years and one year after the men's FIFA World Cup since 1991, when the inaugural tournament, then called the FIFA Women's World Championship, was held in China. Under the tournament's current format, national teams vie for 31 slots in a three-year qualification phase. The host nation's team is automatically entered as the 32nd slot. The tournament, called the World Cup Finals, is contested at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about one month.
The eight FIFA Women's World Cup tournaments have been won by four national teams. The United States have won four times, and are the current champions after winning it at the 2019 tournament in France. The other winners are Germany, with two titles, and Japan and Norway with one title each.
Six countries have hosted the Women's World Cup. China and the United States have each hosted the tournament twice, while Canada, France, Germany, and Sweden have each hosted it once.
The 2023 competition is being hosted by Australia and New Zealand, making it the first edition to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, the first Women's World Cup to be hosted by two countries, as well as the first FIFA senior competition for either men or women to be held across two confederations