Getty Images The referee has blown the whistle, the biggest Women’s World Cup in history has begun. The opening ceremony took place this Thursday (20th of July), at the Eden Park stadium, in New Zealand, one of the host countries.
Straight after the ceremony the competition’s first game between New Zealand and Norway took place, with the local team winning 1-0. The Brazilian team will play its first game on the 24th of July, at 8 a.m. in Brazil, against Panama.
The World Cup will take place until the 20th of August in nine cities in New Zealand and Australia. For the first time the championship takes place in two countries and that is not all that is new. This is the biggest women’s world cup ever, with 32 teams, eight more than in 2019, and thousands of fans who have already bought tickets packing the stadiums, as we have not really seen before.
Record in number of spectators and other important figures
The expectation Fifa, the International Federation of Association Football, has is of a record number of spectators in the stadiums due to the growth and popularity of women’s football.
Fatma Samoura, Fifa’s Secretary-General, stated that the over 1 million tickets sold are already more than the total sold for the French World Cup in 2019. There are still tickets available for all the games.
In Brazil, SporTV will air the games for those with cable or satellite TV and other viewers can watch the games on Globo. Manzar Feres, Director of Integrated Businesses in Advertising at Globo, stated that the channel beat its advertising record for transmissions, selling 19 advertising quotas, negotiated with 11 different brands.
Keeping an eye from afar
With the start of the Cup, the interest in women’s football has grown. On TikTok, the visualizations of the hashtag #FutebolFeminino reached the 1,6 billion mark, while #WomensFootball reached 3,7 billion.
In Brazil, the Federal Government decreed it optional for employees of government bodies to go to work or not on days when Brazil will be playing. Private businesses may also allow their collaborators to have the day off during matches.
Inflation in the Cup sticker album
Those who decided to collect stickers for the Women’s World Cup 2023 album have to spend more this year.
The album has 80 pages and 580 stickers. In newsagents, the hard back cover is sold for 52 reais, and the traditional version costs 15 reais, a value which is 25% higher than that which was charged for the Men’s World Cup album in 2022. The packet with five stickers costs 4 reais.
To complete the album, the collector must spend a minimum of 479 reais.
The players’ prize
In 2023, the World Cup prize will be of 110 million dollars (525,7 million reais), a value which is 300% higher than that offered in 2019 and 10 times larger than that of 2015.
On announcing the value, Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s president, stated that this was one of the first steps towards conquering equal salaries between men’s and women’s football. Today, the value is still 35% smaller than that paid for men’s football.
The winning team will receive 16 million dollars (76,4 million reais). Even with the final prize, for the first time, all the players taking part in the cup will receive an individual sum. The value varies according to the team´s performance. Around 30 thousand dollars (R$ 143,3 thousand reais) to those eliminated in the first phase and 270 thousand dollars (R$ 1,2 million reais) to the players of the winning team.
Therefore, of the total value, around 61,3 million dollars (291,5 million reais) will go to the clubs and 49 million dollars (234,1 millions reais) to the players.
Sources: Valor Econômico, CNN, Terra, Forbes and ESPN.
