The point’s been made plenty over the last week or two but the next few years are going to be incredible for women’s sport in Aotearoa. The Cricket World Cup and the Rugby World Cup are both coming here in 2021... then the Football World Cup co-hosted with Australia in 2023. Three absolute sporting spectacles, celebrating three of our favourite sports with an emphasis on the women who partake in them and the kids who look up to them. You love, as they say, to see it.

But another point does need to be made that one of those things is not like the others, at least not on a global scale. We don’t need to get all talkback radio on this by comparing the events because all three are gonna be brilliant so it’s all positive. And we defs don’t need to compare the men’s Rugby World Cup to this, that’d be the realm of Stuff commenters. But, like, just the sheer scale of having the FIFA Women’s World Cup down under like this... it’s probably fair to say that the wider kiwi public don’t quite have a handle on how massive this is going to be. Despite the condescending politics of UEFA during the voting process, this is no development tournament. We’ve had a few of those in the past, youth level World Cups and all that. Three in fact, here’s the list...

• 1999 U16 Men’s World Cup

• 2008 U17 Women’s World Cup

• 2015 U20 Men’s World Cup

Plus with the hosting rights for the 2023 Women’s World Cup we (along with Oz, obviously) should also get the hosting rights for the 2022 U20 Women’s World Cup too, at least that’s supposed to be the case. Since every second version of that one comes the year before the Women’s World Cup they normally give the WWC hosts the U20s a year before as a sort of practice run. They did it with France last time and Canada and Germany before them. But the Women’s U20s are in a bit of a strange place at the moment since the next event, in Costa Rica & Panama, was meant to happen this year (U20s are on a two-year cycle) yet has had to be postponed until early 2021 so not really sure what that means for the one after. There doesn’t seem to be any mention of the 2022 U20s yet although wikipedia’s already given it to Oz/NZ.

Anyway, point being that the Women’s World Cup is a Very Big Deal. FIFA this week put out a bunch of reports to mark the one-year anniversary of the 2019 World Cup. Amongst them was a physical report which gets into how the athleticism continues to grow at the tournament, using the evidence of distances covered and speeds achieved and things like that. The numbers are a bit hard to decipher in a way that adds any more context to anything other than what we already knew which is that the standard of women’s footy at the top level is absolutely skyrocketing.

That was the case at the 2015 WC, it continued to be the case at the 2019 WC... and in three more years it’ll keep on that exponential curve for the 2023 WC as the biggest clubs in the men’s game continue to invest in their women’s teams, as the broadcasting exposure of the top women’s leagues expands, as the fanbases for those teams and players do the same, as the sponsorships come flooding in. There’s only one trajectory here and it’s upwards. Football is the most dominant and passionately followed sport on the planet and the more integrated the female side of things is getting (extremely overdue but okay at least it’s happening) the steeper that trajectory gets to be. It’s pretty simple when you really break it down... you commit resources to the women’s stuff and the game grows hugely. It’s never been the talent of the players or their enthusiasm that’s held things back.

Which means it stands to reason that the 2023 World Cup will be the biggest yet, breaking records that were broken last time in breaking records set the time before. Speaking of those records, that’s another one of those reporty things that FIFA have tossed out into the ether. This one was immediately after the event, the broadcasting stats. The 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup had a total audience reach on viewing platforms of 1.12 billion people. The stadium crowds were slightly down on the Canadian event but the global television audience rose by a monstrous 30% from that 2015 edition. The final was the most watched Women’s World Cup game in history, which presumably makes it the most watched women’s football game full stop. An average of 82 million people were watching that one at any particular moment with a total audience of 263 million all up. And while the USA drives some of that, and the growth in Europe was the most notable on-field trend (the eight quarter-finalists were the USA and seven European teams)... it was actually in Asia that the telly numbers were most impressive, thanks largely to China (although Europe bossed the total hours of viewing even if Asia had more individual viewers).

That fact is sneakily massive for us because, well, Australia plays out of the Asian confederation so the AFC are technically co-hosting this thing meaning extra buy-in from that part of the world. Just quietly, you’d hope this does a bit to address the exploding European power in international women’s footy before those nations all run away with things due to their proximity to all the moneybags. A bit of pushback from the Asian conference would go sweet after some disappointing results in 2019... Aussie went out on penalties to Norway, Japan were beaten by a 90th minute penalty against eventual finalists Netherlands, China were beaten 2-0 by Italy (all in the round of 16), while South Korea and Thailand both went out in the group stages losing all three of their matches... same as Oceania’s only representative: New Zealand.

(By the way, New Zealand’s three games were all well under the group stage average for telly viewership and our third game, Cameroon vs NZ, was the least viewed match of the whole tournament, so it goes)

But the report which is the most tantalising was the one about the social and economic legacy. It’s published in French but FIFA did chuck up an English language breakdown in which they specify that...

• “France 2019 made EUR 284 million contribution to French GDP”

• “6.4 tonnes of food waste collected and donated to local community-based associations”

• “First-ever collaboration between a sport event and the French 'Service Civique' to offer young professionals work experience”

• “Enhanced audio-descriptive commentary systems and waste management facilities left at stadiums in Host Cities”

• “Guide on non-discriminatory language in football also developed”

284 million Euros pumped into the French economy? Yeah that’ll do. Especially since there seems to be a subtle contrarian line out there that hosting this event will be rather expensive. Okay, perhaps it will be in terms of cash upfront. But FIFA are gonna pay for some of that and it’ll make back more than it loses and then some. That EUR 284m number is the total income, the net capital gain came out to EUR 108m... which converted to NZD works out at $186.9m and that, friends, is a lot of moneymoneymoney. Keep in mind that the WWC is expanding to 32 teams for the next edition too so that means an additional twelve games which in turn means more spectators, more television viewers, more money-making potential, etc.

Those are some intense numbers. They also reckon that the average visiting fan that flew to France for the tournament contributed NZ$244 to the local GDP while the various host cities benefited from a return on investment anywhere between two to twenty euros for every one euro that they spent in the first place. This is the big time. FIFA may still be corrupt as all hell but they know how to run a slick major tournament and in recent years that’s come to include a decent emphasis on sustainability too. From improving accessibility at stadiums for disabled spectators to collecting and recycling 210k cigarette butts (France being France). Magnifique, as the last hosts would say.

It feels appropriate to give the last word in this piece to FIFA’s Chief Women's Football Officer, Sarai Bareman. The figurative head of women’s footy on the governing body, reporting directly to FIFA’s Deputy Secretary, and a proud New Zealander too. You should already know that but it bears repeating, particularly with the World Cup finding its way to Australia and New Zealand. Also worth repeating is that Sarai Bareman is the sister of UFC coaching mastermind Eugene Bareman, outta City Kickboxing, so that’s one heck of a powerful sporting family right there.

This is what Sarai Bareman had to say to FIFA.com about the World Cup hosting announcement and the growth of women’s footy...

“We have already seen off the back of France 2019 the increase in participation in the women's game - especially in Europe. I saw figures for example in England. More than 800,000 women and young girls are joining grassroots programs after France. I know this will be the same in Asia and the Pacific. It excites me that it will result in many more opportunities for young girls in that region. I was very fortunate to grow up in New Zealand where I had access to a club and infrastructure. I was able to play and I was very well supported. I think this Women’s World Cup will act as a catalyst and is going to open up so many eyes to how big women's football is, and what a huge opportunity exists for the women's game.”

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