2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup hailed as ‘most successful in history’

August 11, 2023

Nigel Benton

With the Quarter final round commencing today, the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand has been acknowledged for setting the highest standards and advancing women’s football.

As of the end of the round of 16 on Tuesday, the tournament has seen more than 1.7 million tickets sold, 1.5 million live spectators while reaching a global viewing audience of more than 2 billion.

In Australia, an average of over 30,000 fans have attended each match. In New Zealand, despite initial slow ticket sales, Auckland's Eden Park welcomed 42,137 fans for the tournament opener - representing the biggest crowd in the country's football history, men's or women's.

The largest attendance so far has been Australia's opener in Stadium Australia, where 75,784 saw the Matildas' victory over the Republic of Ireland as well as their win over Denmark in the Round of 16 with the exact same figure. It was a record home crowd for a women's football match in Australia and the third largest in Women's World Cup history.

Domestic television coverage across Channel Seven’s platforms is closing in on 10 million viewers at the formal halfway point.

Optus Sport, the digital service which has rights to every game live, has declined to release ratings figures, but reported the tournament’s first half as the streaming platform’s largest week ever.

Channel Seven’s broadcasting triumph has prompted the network to move tomorrow night's AFL match broadcast back five minutes to a 7.30pm timeslot to accommodate the Matildas’ quarter-final against France being shown live on its main channel.

The AFL will also be turning the MCG and Optus Stadium in Perth into Women’s World Cup live sites showing the Matildas’ match on big screens.

Hailing the tournament as the most successful in history and acknowledging the governing body's belief in the Matildas and women’s football, Football Australia Chief Executive, James Johnson advised “their unwavering spirit and resilience resonate with our nation’s values and their success on the pitch has made them a symbol of national pride.

“To see Australia united behind this team has been inspiring.

“This Women’s World Cup has been a milestone for Football Australia and for women’s football in our country. We are overwhelmed with the profound impact of the tournament so far.”

Not all matches have attracted large crowds with the Group E match between Portugal and Vietnam attracting just 6,645 fans to Stadium Waikato.

Mindful of potential small crowds at New Zealand venues, organisers handed out 20,000 free tickets to some group games.

Multicultural Support
However, an area of visible success at most games has been the multicultural support that many teams have attracted.

With 55,000 overseas visitors understood to have travelled to Australia for the tournament, many locals have either adopted one of the teams as their own, or used the World Cup as an opportunity to connect with their heritage or homeland.

This has resulted from a strategic approach by the organisers.

Explaining this, FIFA’s Chief Women’s Football Officer, Sarai Bareman advised “we’ve been meeting with the different embassies, the high commissioners from all the different countries that are competing in the tournament, we’ve engaged with an agency who is specifically there going into the different ethnic communities to engage them.

“If you look, for example, at the Filipino community in Auckland - absolutely incredible, showing up in numbers at Eden Park. It’s not by coincidence; we’ve made a clear push for that.

“We know that this is the world’s most popular sport, and it was just a matter of digging out and finding those fans and engaging them and getting them involved and making them understand that they can be part of this incredible event.”

One of the biggest driving forces has been Cultural Pulse, a Sydney-based agency specialising in reaching into ‘micro-communities’, who were engaged by FIFA to help tap into people often missed by typical marketing efforts.

Previously known as Red Elephant, the company was the secret behind the success of the 2015 AFC Asian Cup in Australia, where fans again came out in big numbers to support matches between relatively obscure teams that, on paper, would not appear to be of great interest.

Since rebranding as Cultural Pulse, they have worked on similar projects with the 2017 Rugby League World Cup, 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, and the ICC T20 Women’s World Cup in 2020.

For the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Cultural Pulse helped launch a ‘community champions’ initiative in which about 150 community and business leaders and media or social media figures were chosen to help build awareness and stimulate grassroots support for the diaspora of the full field of teams, while also deploying their own extensive and intricate database of people and communities which has been built over time.

Beyond that, efforts are tailored for the needs and cultures of each specific community. For example, to speak directly to the growing number of Colombians in Sydney, Cultural Pulse went to where they are - community Facebook pages, Latin and Reggaeton events and local influencers. Other ethnic or migrant groups have their own foreign-language newspapers or media outlets, which have been specifically targeted.

In a further demonstration that the tournament has captured the imagination of the Australian public, 10s of thousands of fans have flocked to live sites and FIFA Fan Festivals all over the country matches and engage with the best in football, music, entertainment, local culture, food and games.

FIFA Fan Festival sites welcome more than 500,000 fans
Being held for the first time at a Women’s World Cup, FIFA Fan Festivals earlier this week reached a significant milestone welcoming the 500,000th fan to one of the free-to-attend events.

Located across host cities in Australia and New Zealand, during Australia’s game against Canada on 27^th July, a record 50,000 visitors came through the gates of FIFA Fan Festivals.

with the 500,000th visitor awarded two tickets to the FIFA Women’s World Cup final.

Formerly called FIFA Fan Fests, FIFA Fan Festivals have been a regular feature of the FIFA World Cup since 2006. However, this year’s tournament in Australia and New Zealand has been the first time this experience has been offered in all host cities of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Since its inception, the FIFA Fan Festivals have welcomed more than 40 million visitors across five continents.

The events show the matches live on big screens, while also offering music, entertainment, local culture, food and beverages, and fan activities. During the current Women's World Cup the music program included performances from artists such as Ladyhawke, Jessica Mauboy and Kimbra.

Images: Sydney's Accor Stadium during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup (top and middle, credit: Arthur Stanley/VenuesLive) and FIFA’s Sarai Bareman at yesterday's Winning Playbook event in Sydney (below).

About the author

Nigel Benton

Co-founder/Publisher, Australasian Leisure Management

Born in the English county of Dorset, Nigel Benton is the co-founder and Publisher of Australasian Leisure Management, Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific’s only magazine for professionals in all areas of the leisure industry and the www.ausleisure.com.au website - the go to news resource for industry leaders and professionals.

With a long-term commitment to communicating all that is best about the leisure industry (aquatics, attractions, entertainment, events, fitness, parks, recreation, sport, tourism and venues) his career has been defined by an ability to develop and implement industry communications.

Starting his career working in heritage visitor attractions and then adventure travel in Africa and the Middle East, an interest in writing about his experiences led to his change of career into magazine journalism and publishing.

In addition to publishing, Nigel speaks on marketing communications at a range of industry events.

He was made a Life Member of the World Leisure and Recreation Association in 2006 and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (London).

In 2020, he launched the new Asian Leisure Business website.

As of October 2024, he was inducted into the Australian Fitness Awards Roll of Honour at the 2024 AUSactive National Awards.

Among a range of published works and features, his comments on a Blog (blogspot) from 2007 to 2011, when this website went live in its current form, may be interesting to reflect back on.

His philosophy on life is to be kind to all and to indulge those that you love.

His passions include family, Newcastle United and motorcycles (especially British ones) as well, until February 2025 when she left us, caring a little pug named Stella.

Click here to connect with him via LinkedIn.