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Ten reasons the Women’s World Cup 2023 will be bigger than Qatar 2022 By Christina Thakor-Rankin
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omen’s sport is on the rise. A recent Neilson Report indicates that up to 84% of all sports fans (51% male and 49% female) are interested in watching women’s sport. In countries like the UK, US, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Germany, Italy, and France - around 66% of the population is interested in at least one women’s sport. Further research indicates that when it comes to the most recognisable female team sports athletes football players appear in almost every national list - in France, Germany, and Italy the top three most recognizable female athletes are footballers, and in the US the top two. 2. Women’s football (soccer) is the fastest growing sport on the planet - bar none. Recent reports by Pitcher and WGP Global show the exponential rise in popularity of women’s football both in terms of players and viewers. The most compelling figures are FIFA’s own. Audience numbers for the last Women’s World Cup in 2019
INFINITY GAMING
broke the 1 billion mark - exceeding all previous records and expectations. A closer look at the numbers indicates that this was not regional but global. Audiences figures in Africa and the Middle East doubled from 12 to 24 million compared to the previous WWC in 2015, the rise in other parts of the worlds was even bigger with Europe seeing an increase in audience number of 136% and Latin America a staggering 560%. The overall growth in audience from 2015 to 2019 was 65%. The largest increase in viewers was Asia with coverage of live matches increasing in every territory compared
to the previous event in 2015. A point of interest for sportsbook operators who link viewer numbers with betting activity is that the 10 most watched games in 2019 involved the national teams of countries where betting is now a regulated activity. The final between US and The Netherlands pulled in a live global audience of just over 82 million. This may pale in comparison to audience figures for the men’s equivalent in 2018 but compare it to other events such as an average audience of 102 million for the Superbowl, and the rise in popularity of women’s football becomes increasingly hard to ignore. 3. Generation Z. ‘Post-millennials’, ‘snowflakes’, ‘zoomers’ - call them what you will, this generation is here, and already taking on the world. Tech savvy, globally connected, socially responsible and the most ethnically and racially diverse generation ever, this group has the sheer scale of numbers to make things happen. This is the protest generation, from climate change to racial
