2023 World Cup Puts Growth Of Women’s Sport On Full Display

If you build it, they will come. This sentiment has shifted from a battle cry to a description of the rapid growth across women’s sport. Not surprisingly, the 2023 Women’s World Cup is quickly becoming one of the best representations of this claim. Overall ticket sales have been breaking records ahead of the July 20th kickoff, and officials recently announced an opening match sellout of roughly 80,000. This sold out match is in addition to the more than 1 million tickets that have been purchased across the 64 tournament matches, with projected estimates now sitting at roughly 1.5 million tickets being sold prior to the start of the World Cup.

The tremendous interest and excitement surrounding the 2023 Women’s World Cup is directly connected to the constant, albeit slow and often labored, efforts to expand promotion and access to the tournament across the world. According to Megan Rapinoe, forward for the U.S. Women’s National Team, during the USWNT media day, this Women’s World Cup “feels like a real opportunity to blow the lid off in terms of fanfare and media and sponsorships and the larger business around this sport. I think everyone is sort of hip to the game now and understands that this is not somewhere that’s just like ‘oh, let’s cheer for the Women’s World Cup because that’s the right thing to do.’ It’s actually a terrible business move if you’re not getting in on it, if you’re not investing, if you’re not putting resources into it.”

Preferences Do Not Develop in Isolation

For all intensive purposes, women’s sport, and specifically international women’s soccer, is still in its infancy. The first FIFA Women’s World Cup was held in 1991, 61 years after the first men’s tournament in 1930. In terms of growth comparisons, the women’s tournament overall attendance numbers (estimated 1.1 million to 1.5 million) are outpacing the men’s at their own 30-year mark (800,000). To further increase this trajectory of growth, the promotion, investment, and increased access to women’s sport must continue to expand, given that preferences do not develop in isolation.

An individual’s preferences do not develop in isolation of investments, promotion, marketing, access, and overall socialization. In a 2017 study on women’s sport viewership intentions, those individuals who had viewed at least one half of a professional women’s soccer event were twice as likely to view a future event. Additionally, when asked about their perceptions of the perceived quality of the sporting event, participant perceptions were two-times higher if they had viewed at least one half of a pervious women’s sporting event compared to those who had never watched a game.

The proof can be seen in the viewership numbers for the 2019 Women’s World Cup, which the 2023 World Cup plans to build upon. Following increased access and promotional efforts, including a variety of new and affordable streaming options, over 1.1 billion tuned in to watch in 2019. Thus, consistent, reliable, and well-produced access to women’s sporting events is incremental in achieving future growth, as exposure shapes our current and future preferences.

Women’s Sport Growth Trajectory

Business decisions based on increased growth are already being impacted in real-time for the 2023 Women’s World Cup. The original venue for the opening match of the tournament, where the co-hosts Australia will take on Ireland, was initially set to be housed in a facility that held 42,500. Following record-level demand to attend the match, tournament officials opted to change the location of the match to a venue with a capacity of 80,000, providing increased access to better match overall demand.

According to Kelsey Trainor, founder of Invest in Women, “For the past few years, women’s sports have been on this incredible growth trajectory. While still in the growth phase, the buy in is no longer low. The market is starting to catch up and yesterdays price is not todays. We’re seeing that with the WWC and the snowball impact. Brands seeing the value and investing. Media seeing brands investing and wanting part of that. More visibility means more fans. More fans means more tickets out the door. It’s a cycle. It will only continue to grow and right now we’re seeing the phase of growth that takes women’s sports to the next level.”

If the current trajectory and projections hold, this will be one of the most highly attended and viewed Women’s World Cups in history, and will easily surpass the attendance numbers experienced by the men at their 30 year tournament mark. By providing easier access and additional opportunities to attend and view these events, stakeholders are merely matching current demand while simultaneously providing avenues to generate increased interest and fandom for years to come. They have built it, and the people are absolutely coming.