Commercial rollout of Women’s World Cup criticised as missed opportunity

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The face of Australia’s star footballer Sam Kerr has graced the largest billboard in the southern hemisphere for weeks.

As excitement around the Women’s World Cup builds ahead of the kick-off on Thursday the Glebe Silo Billboard, originally used to promote the Sydney Olympics in 2000, now features “the Matildas” — the Australian women’s football team.

Organisers expect 1.5mn to attend games in person across the country and co-hosts New Zealand and are targeting a global TV audience of 2bn, up from 1.1bn for the tournament held in France in 2019.

However, an unforgiving time difference for the big media markets in Europe and the US, last-minute rows over broadcast rights and late-landing sponsorship deals have led to criticism that the tournament has been a missed opportunity to grow the game and foster long-term commercial interest in women’s sport. Some are concerned that Fifa, world football’s governing body, has fumbled the commercial rollout.

“I expected more,” said Amie Cripps, deputy editor who oversees women’s football coverage at publisher and media agency Versus. “Last summer I felt like something had shifted. I thought, this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. But clearly not.” 

The Women’s World Cup this year is set to generate just over $300mn in sponsorship revenue for Fifa, according to estimates from analytics firm GlobalData, although much of that comes from rolling multi-year brand partnerships. The men’s World Cup in Qatar last year brought in total revenue of $6.3bn.

Fifa has put money behind this year’s contest — the pot for prize money and payments to players and clubs has been trebled to $152mn, while the total budget allocated to the tournament has been raised to $395mn from $156mn in 2019.

The governing body was forced to drop a planned sponsorship deal with the Saudi Arabian tourist board following a public backlash earlier this year, while fraught negotiations over TV rights in Europe’s five biggest markets — the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain — prompted threats of a broadcast blackout.

Gianni Infantino, Fifa president, said at the time that broadcasters had only offered $1-10mn for the TV rights, compared to $100-200mn for the men’s World Cup. The stand-off was resolved with just one month to go following a plea from sports ministers in each of the five countries. 

The saga left advertisers reluctant to throw their weight behind a tournament that might not air, putting players and teams at a disadvantage securing their own commercial deals. 

Several big sponsors have only committed to the tournament in the last couple of months. Partnerships with Unilever and McDonald’s were announced in May, while AB InBev signed up in June. A Fifa-TikTok collaboration to provide tailored World Cup content was announced only a week before the tournament was due to start. 

Jenny Mitton, women’s sport lead at M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment, said the late sponsorship announcements pointed to a lack of planning.

“Fifa hasn’t given the tournament enough of an opportunity to sell itself, which is really disappointing,” she said. “Broadcasters and brands weren’t given enough time to invest and create brilliant campaigns.” 

Fifa did not respond to a request for comment.

Attaching precise commercial value to women’s football is hard, in part owing to Fifa’s historic bundling of deals for men’s and women’s tournaments. When AB InBev announced their sponsorship of the 2023 Women’s World Cup last month, it was at the same time as committing to the men’s tournament in 2026.

“Commercial deals rarely have a value attached . . . it makes it hard to drive [it] higher,” said Amy Clarke from the Deloitte Sports Business Group. “Some people say you should make brands say it aloud. That would put more pressure on for brands to put more value on the women’s game.” 

Women’s football — and women’s sport more broadly — has been gathering momentum, accelerated by Euro 2022 in the UK last summer with a Wembley final that attracted a record attendance.

Former England player Karen Carney, who spearheaded a landmark review into the future of domestic women’s football in the UK, conceded that the timezone of this year’s World Cup “does cause some problems” for viewers in Europe, but that there was still plenty of opportunity to engage with fans.

Her report, published last week, found that women’s football “still finds itself in a start-up phase” and was in need of investment in order to develop both on and off the pitch.

Despite the concerns leading into the tournament, those working in the sport hope the football itself will ultimately shine through, especially once the knockout stages begin and capture national attention.

“Even if the build up hasn’t been perfect . . . major events can really turn one-off fans into habitual fans and it can only be good for the growth of the women’s game,” said Clarke.

The opening game for Australia against Ireland, held at Sydney’s Olympic Park which holds 80,000 spectators, is sold out.

“There’s been a terrific public response to it. You can’t get tickets for love nor money,” said Kim Williams, former board member of the Australian Football League. “Once the World Cup gets going, the innate nature of a major international contest will come to the fore.”

Additional reporting by Josh Noble