After two weeks of competition in Oceania, the Women’s World Cup has already brought together more spectators than during the entire 2019 edition in France, Fifa announced on Friday, claiming to have “exceeded expectations from multiple points of view”. After 48 matches in Australia and New Zealand, 1.222 million spectators came to the stands, with an average attendance of over 25,000 people per stadium.
This represents an increase of 29% compared to the World Cup in France at this stage of the competition. The 2019 World Cup had welcomed around 1.1 million spectators in the stadiums for the entire tournament, which however had fewer teams (24 against 32) and therefore fewer matches (52 against 64). “I’m confident that by the final we will have more than 1.9 million fans who will have passed through the gates,” said Fifa women’s football manager Sarai Bareman. “The tournament has been amazing so far, we have exceeded our expectations in multiple ways.”
Several matches were sold out, such as Australia’s first match in Sydney against Ireland in front of over 75,000 people. Other meetings, especially in New Zealand, however, attracted fewer people.
“But you have to look at it with hindsight. New Zealand is a rugby country. We had to convert as many people as possible from rugby to football and we saw that,” swept Sarai Bareman. “We saw a sold-out Portugal-United States at Eden Park, while the national team was not even playing”.
So far, more than 1.715 million tickets have been sold for the competition, far more than Fifa’s original target of 1.3 million. Fifa was also satisfied with certain audience figures, stressing for example that the meeting between the Americans and the Dutch had been the most followed group match in history in the United States. “We broke records almost daily. In Colombia, for example, the scores exceeded those of the Men’s World Cup,” said Sarai Bareman.
