Live! From TV Studio New Zealand! It’s The Women’s World Cup!

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – Sports dominate television, and TV dominates the sports industry.

Understanding that relationship is something I try to impart to my students when I teach a class called “Sports, Media and Society” back at Penn State University. This month, I’ve seen the axiom work itself out in real time, along with other lessons of sports business and culture, as I have been leading a team of students who are assisting The Associated Press as it covers the Women’s World Cup.

My strongest impression from this month lived in New Zealand? The strange experience of covering an engaging, fun, global sporting event in a welcoming country that, honestly, doesn’t care all that much about the global sporting event – which gets back to my original point.

The Big Show

When I arrived in New Zealand early in July for a holiday, I was struck by how – outside of the airport – there was virtually no signage for the Women’s World Cup in Auckland, a city of more than 1.6 million people and by far this nation’s population center. My students even wrote about the lack of hype ahead of the opening match.

Now, I know that in the event a FIFA official reads this, that person would surely point to record ticket sales in Australia-New Zealand and say the idea that our co-hosts aren’t into the Women’s World Cup is crazy. But it seems to be true that there is a big contrast between enthusiasm in Australia vs. New Zealand, where 20,000 tickets were given away to bolster lagging sales.

Sure, opening night at Eden Park for New Zealand’s 1-0 upset of Norway set an attendance record for soccer here of 42,137, and the United States’ 3-0 victory over Vietnam drew more than 41,000, many traveling Americans. But we’ve also had matches with under 7,000 people in the seats in the smaller cities of Dunedin and Hamilton. Avoid looking at the field, and the crowd huddled in the stands on those nights looked not unlike fans at a late-season football game in the American Midwest, between high school teams with losing records.

The field also has been expanded from 24 teams to 32, so there also is an argument to be made that, with 64 matches, the tournament better break all the previous attendance records.

And, of course, there’s the experience test. I’ve been to the Olympics or Paralympics in Sydney, Athens and Rio de Janeiro, to the men’s World Cup in South Africa and to four Super Bowls. In all those places, the excitement vibe was stronger. Johannesburg, in particular, felt supercharged to host the world’s biggest tournament for the planet’s most popular sport.

Here? Not so much. The other night a friend here sent me a photo of a post-match party at a pub filled with Argentine fans, fresh from salvaging a 2-2 draw with South Africa in an exciting match.

“First time I feel like I’m at the World Cup,” the caption read.

Does It Matter?

So, hold those thoughts a moment. Let’s go back into the classroom, where we learn that there are four traditional ways of making money in the sports: media rights; ticket sales; sponsorships; and, merchandise sales.

When I asked for his impressions of the Women’s World Cup so far, my colleague at Alabama, Ronald Reagan Chair of Broadcasting Andrew Billings, went right to the reason why the lack of hype and spotty attendance in New Zealand may not ultimately matter all that much to FIFA.

“I think this Women’s World Cup is another example of how TV (and time zones) rule over all other aspects of sports right now,” Ronald Reagan Chair of Broadcasting Andrew Billings said. “The TV contract now overwhelms the gate receipts and, in doing so, the power transfers as well. In some cases, it appears the stadium crowd is largely there as seat fillers to convey the importance of the TV product.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, FIFA got in the neighborhood of $200 million for the global media rights to the women’s tournament, less than what it wanted and nowhere near the value of the men’s tournament, but still a lot of money. Enough to put the Women’s World Cup into Hamilton’s Waikato Stadium, official capacity 18,009. On a Tuesday night. In the winter. During the school year.

“Still, there’s so much appeal to this year’s (Women’s) World Cup,” Billings added. “It’s hosted in a locale with little troubling local issues and the number of people interested in the event continues to rise, which will bode well for the future as the TV contract is now unbundled from the men’s World Cup.”

In the end, it’s hard to disagree with him on financial grounds alone.

But there’s also this. Somewhere out there on planet Earth, there are millions upon millions of girls who will see this tournament on TV and be inspired to go outside, pick up a ball and try to become the soccer star of tomorrow.