U.S. women’s team a hot ticket in town

Tickets for the World Cup finalist U.S. women’s national soccer team’s August match in Pittsburgh are going fast.

While the United States will rematch with reigning champion Japan at 7 p.m. Sunday in the FIFA Women's World Cup final in Vancouver, British Columbia, the team will play its first post-World Cup match, a friendly against Costa Rica, at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 16 at Heinz Field. Tickets just went on general sale Wednesday, but 23,000 have already been sold as of today, U.S. Soccer confirmed.

The first and only other time the U.S. women’s team played in Pittsburgh, a 2004 friendly against Iceland after an Olympic gold medal run in Athens, only 6,386 fans made it to Heinz Field.

The match also will air on Fox Sports 1, but tickets are still available through ussoccer.com and 1-800-7453000 as well as Ticketmaster ticket centers in Pittsburgh. Prices range from $28 for end-line seats to $250 for onfield seats. Ultimate fan tickets — which include a jersey, stadium tour and onfield seats — are available for $550.

Ratings up

Thanks to the U.S. team, the Women’s World Cup is proving to be a strong performer for Fox and Fox Sports 1. The 8.4 million viewers who watched the Americans defeat Germany, 2-0, in Tuesday’s first semifinal brought the tournament average for all games to 1.3 million, up 45 percent from the 899,000 on ESPN and ESPN2 four years ago. Mike Mulvihill, Fox’s senior vice president for programming and research, cited three factors for the increased viewership from 2011. One, a tournament played in Canada, with its North American time zones, is likely to be seen by more people than one played in Germany, as the 2011 event was. He said the time zones enabled Fox to schedule all the U.S. team’s games in the evening, at least for some of the audience. A second reason, Mulvihill said, was putting 16 of the 52 matches on a broadcast network — more than in all other Women’s World Cups combined — which has exposed more people to the tournament. And third, grass-roots growth in women’s soccer has expanded the audience.

Golden ball and glove

Germany's Celia Sasic and goalkeeper Nadine Angerer are among the finalists for tournament awards. Sasic is up for Golden Ball honors as the top player. She will go up against Japan's Saori Ariyoshi and Aya Miyama, England's Lucy Bronze, France's Amandine Henry and Americans Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd and Julie Johnson. Angerer is nominated for Golden Glove honors as top goalkeeper along with Japan's Ayumi Kaihori and American Hope Solo.