Women’s World Cup hit by empty seats and Fifa’s warped priorities
From fans finding pre-tournament that they would be seated separately from friends and family, to exaggerated ticket sales and overzealous stewarding, Fifa has struggled to meet the expectations from supporters that a major international women’s tournament now generates.
This is set to be the most-watched Women’s World Cup. More than 200 broadcasters are in attendance. Viewing figures for England’s Group D opener against Scotland on the BBC peaked at 6.1 million – 37.8% of the available audience – breaking the old UK viewership record of 4 million figure for England’s Euro 2017 semifinal against the Netherlands. A healthy 20,294 were in the stands to watch the Lionesses take on Argentina in Le Havre.
There is a lot to celebrate. Not least the efforts on the pitch: Thailand’s 13-0 defeat by the US followed by their emotion-busting consolation goal in defeat to Sweden; Christiane Endler’s heroics in goal for Chile against the USA; Argentina’s Vanina Correa who, after a sixyear hiatus during which she had twins, was coaxed back to international football in 2017 and produced a playerof-the-match performance against England; the Dutch wonder Vivianne Miedema breaking her country’s scoring record at the age of 22. The list could go on and on.
Yet undermining the brilliance on the field is the fan experience off of it. Where the smaller cities have embraced the tournament, partly for the tourism it brings, the mood in places such as Paris and Nice has been underwhelming.
Fifa, in an effort to rectify the colossal seating error that led to parents being divided from children, recalled and reissued tickets to some matches. Fans who arrived with their original tickets – unaware new ones had been issued –were unable to gain entry, were forced to queue for reprints and, in the case of the opening match, missed the ceremony and start of the game.
The news was trumpeted when ticket sales topped 1m. Except 1.3m were sold four years ago in Canada. The circumstances were different – doubleheaders meant some were counted twice – but, even with that caveat, we are not seeing demand on the ground match the four years of growth of the women’s game.
When asked about the lack of atmosphere in Paris, where advertising for the French Open tennis that finished on 9 June has been more prominent, Erwan Le Prévost, the head of the local organising committee for the World Cup said: “Depends what you’re expecting from posters and setting up an event in the city. The means we have available to us is bigger every competition thanks to Fifa support. It’s a Women’s World Cup by Fifa; the main aim is to fill the stadiums and to have the biggest TV audience possible.”
If they have been focused on filling stadiums then they have failed spectacularly. Le Prévost said 20 games were sold out and that four of seven matches at the Parc des Princes were at capacity. A week later Fifa said that, actually, 14 games were sell-outs. Either way, this is staggeringly low for a major international tournament. There are 24 teams in France. We are talking significantly less than one game per team sold out.
When, on the day before the tournament started,we were told that ticket sales were at 965,000, there was hope that they would reach 1.3m. Yet the timing suggested this was almost impossible. With the semi-finals and final sold out, a drive to get big numbers to the early, less desirable, group games needed to have happened sooner. One week later a total of 1.025m ticketshad been, in the words of a Fifa spokesperson, “allocated to fans around the world”.
The spokesperson continued: “Of these, approximately 16% are complimentary tickets. Constituents receiving complimentary tickets include media representatives, VIP & VVIP guests, companions of special access ticket holders, delegations of the teams playing, commercial affiliates, observers, medical and technical staff and other ticket holders.”
An increase of 60,000 tickets “allocated” since 7 June is not to be sniffed at, yet it is getting that reaction because it is substantially below predictions. If Fifa had not overplayed sales the disappointment might not exist.
Meanwhile, the low price of some seats and the number of complimentary tickets have led to no-shows – and empty seats – at sold-out games. Fair ticket prices should be welcomed but there is a fine balance between accessibility and undervaluing the game.
Tickets are still on sale and, contrary to some reports, can be purchased on the door. “If there is still ticket availability for a match, fans can buy tickets at ticket booths at the stadium on match day,” said Fifa.
Unfortunately a combination of these issues has put people off going. Perhaps the ejection of an Iranian couple from the Stade des Alps before New Zealand v Canada can be added to that. They were taken out by security for wearing T-shirts featuring “Let Iranian women enter their stadiums” on the front and “No to forced hijab” and “Girls of revolution street” on the back.
Their ejection raised questions about Fifa’s priorities. Is it protecting the reputations of regimes actively blocking women’s participation in sport over supporting those highlighting and pushing a real equality agenda?
Fifa responded by describing “the promotion of gender equality” as a priority and said the fans should not have been asked to leave. It said: “Fifa believes that the message to allow women into football stadiums in Iran is a social, not political, matter and so the message on the front of the T-shirts worn by two fans is not against the Fifa rules, which always need to be applied with a sense of proportion.
“As such, in this specific case, the fans should not have been asked to remove their T-shirts or to leave the stadium by local security, even if there were other messages on the back of their T-shirts. Fifa will do its best to ensure that any similar situations do not occur.”