How’s this for a surprising statistic, ahead of the FIFA Women’s World Cup being held in New Zealand later this year.
According to some unofficial – but reliable – tournament sources, there have been more tickets sold to people living in the United States than the total amount bought by Kiwis.
That’s not a slight on locals, who have purchased in good numbers and don’t have the same imperative to make long term plans as foreign visitors, but simply an indication of just how big the event is going to be.
The 2022 Women’s Cricket World Cup was a nice occasion, albeit hampered by Covid restrictions (remember those?) and the underperforming White Ferns, which stopped it from truly moving the needle.
Last year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup was a much bigger deal, helped by free to air television coverage and the astounding Black Ferns’ displays. But there wasn’t much interest in games not featuring New Zealand, especially in the elongated group phase and only a smattering of travelling fans, who were mostly family or friends of the players. The long intervals between matches and no games held south of Auckland also didn’t help momentum.
Compared to those two events, the football tournament will be a barnstormer.
Fifteen teams are coming to this country, located at base camps in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Palmerston North, Christchurch and Dunedin, which will allow locals to see stars up close.
Those squads will bring legions of fans, almost comparable to a British Lions tour.
The USA team, who are two-time defending champions, attracted more than 25,000 travelling supporters to the 2019 event in France and organisers expect similar numbers here later this year.
The Netherlands are famous for the orange army that attends World Cups while the Japanese will also travel in large numbers to support their team. Among the other squads based in this country, the likes of Argentina, Sweden, Italy and South Africa should attract decent support from home.
Aside from the colour provided by thousands of visitors, the scale of the event will be massive, with more than a billion television viewers across the five weeks, while FIFA will be investing millions into the spectacle.
It’s an event that touches the world. 173 nations entered qualifying for this World Cup, including 51 from Europe, 43 from Africa, 27 from Asia and 32 from North and South America.
The action will be frenetic too. There is at least one match on somewhere in New Zealand every day for the first two weeks, with a total of 29 games in this country, including the opening match (Football Ferns vs Norway), two quarter finals
and a semi-final.
Thankfully, there is an even geographical spread with Auckland and Wellington both getting nine games, with six in Dunedin and five in Hamilton.
And football history will be made in New Zealand later this month, with the first Women’s World Cup inter-confederation playoff tournament, to decide the final few spots.
Ten nations will contest the event, held between 18-23 February, including Portugal, Chile, Paraguay, Cameroon and Papua New Guinea. There will be seven matches in Auckland and Hamilton, all in a knockout format, before the last three golden tickets are allocated.
Alongside that tournament there will be another seven preparation games held at the same time, with the Football Ferns in action three times.
It will be the perfect entree for what is coming in July and August – when for a few weeks at least – Kiwis will go football crazy – with the biggest women’s sporting event on the planet in our backyard.
Michael Burgess – Sports Writer