Topline
Despite Women’s World Cup organizer FIFA claiming ticket sales for this year’s event will make it the most attended standalone women’s sporting event in history when it starts next week in Australia and New Zealand, a sponsor of the games announced this week that it will be giving away 20,000 free tickets for matches in New Zealand.
The Sydney Football Stadium, pictured above, will host one of the first games of the FIFA Women’s … [+]
Key Facts
Xero, a New Zealand-based accounting firm and partner of the upcoming games, confirmed to Forbes this week they will be offering 5,000 free tickets to New Zealand based-matches in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin—making that a total of 20,000 free tickets up for grabs.
FIFA Women’s World Cup CEO David Beeche denies that low ticket sales were the reason for the giveaway, telling the New Zealand Herald the freebies were more of a celebration of the tournament’s progress so far, and claiming that New Zealand is actually ahead of Australia in ticket sales if counting per capita.
The speculation over low ticket sales came from comments like the one made by FIFA executive Sarai Bareman, who told a New Zealand podcast last month she was more concerned over ticket sales in New Zealand, where soccer has less “selling power” than in Australia, whose decorated team is favored to go far in this year’s tournament, along with social media posts by former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urging her followers to buy tickets.
Despite the speculation, FIFA president Gianni Infantino announced in June that over 1 million tickets had been sold for this summer’s World Cup so far, surpassing the total sales from the last Women’s World Cup in France and putting the upcoming tournament on track to be the most attended Women’s World Cup in history.
The Associated Press, citing FIFA, reported this week that ticket sales reached 1.25 million for the event, but just 320,000 of those tickets were sold for matches in New Zealand and only six of the 29 matches being held in the country are close to a sell-out.
Suprising Fact
The 2023 Women’s World Cup will be the first edition of the tournament held in two countries, and it will also be the first Women’s World Cup tournament to feature 32 teams—up from 24 at earlier editions. Thirty-two teams matches the number of teams that had taken part in the men’s World Cup, though the men’s tournament is set to expand to 48 teams in 2026.
Key Background
This year’s Women’s World Cup will be held from July 20 to August 20. While the total prize pool of $110 million is roughly 300% higher than what FIFA offered for the last Women’s World Cup in 2019, soccer’s notorious pay gap still remains— the total prize fund at last year’s men’s World Cup was significantly more, at $440 million.
Tangent
The U.S. women’s national team is the two-time defending World Cup champions, and is favored to win a third-straight title—which would make it the team the first in history to capture three-straight World Cups, for either men or women. The American roster headed to this year’s games is the most diverse in the program’s history, with seven Black players and two Mexican-Americans among this year’s group. Notably, this will be the team’s first World Cup since a California federal judge approved a $24 million equal pay settlement between the U.S. women’s national team and the U.S. Soccer Federation, ending a 5-year-long legal dispute for wage equality.
Further Reading
Women’s World Cup: All You Need To Know (Forbes)
Sponsor offers 20,000 free tickets to Women’s World Cup as New Zealand sales lag (The Associated Press)
FIFA offers free Women’s World Cup tickets amid poor NZ sales (ESPN)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabelbekele/2023/07/14/free-tickets-being-giving-away-for-womens-world-cup-despite-fifa-boasting-record-sales-heres-why/