1. A WORLD CUP OF FIRSTS

Breaking records

The ninth edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup was co-hosted by Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in what was a record-breaking tournament of firsts.

Opening Day brought its share of thrills on the pitch, with a big upset win for one host country and a tense match that ended in victory for the other. With over 115,000 fans attending two Stadiums on the first matchday, the football world turned its attention to a FIFA Women’s World Cup filled with excitement, drama, passion, and records.

The tournament showed that standards were rising and generated USD 570 million, allowing it to break even.

FIFA Women’s World Cup to be staged in two countries

senior FIFA tournament hosted in Oceania

With 32 teams and 64 matches

FIFA tournament to be staged in 2 confederations

Where nations from all 6 confederations won a match

Ever in fan attendance (1,978,274)

Ever to break even (USD $570m in revenue)

Continued to break new ground

The expansion of the tournament gave more countries the chance to experience the global showpiece. In line with this expansion, FIFA implemented even more tournament firsts in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in order to grow the competition:

  • First with dedicated Team Base Camps

  • First with a coordinated Legacy Working Group

  • First to honour Indigenous people & culture

  • First with FIFA Fan Festivals – 777,000 visitors

  • First to feature over 160 goals

  • First with ringfenced performance-based funding for all 736 players

Stadiums

With ten total stadiums spread across nine cities and two countries, this is the first time a Women’s World Cup took place in two different countries.

General view outside the stadium prior to the FIFA Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023

Australia

  • Sydney/Wangal: Stadium Australia (Capacity: 75,784)

  • Sydney/Gadigal: Sydney Football Stadium (Capacity: 40,583)

  • Brisbane/Meeanjin (Capacity: 49,461)

  • Melbourne/Naarm (Capacity: 27,706)

  • Perth/Boorloo (Capacity: 18,727)

  • Adelaide/Tarntanya (Capacity: 13,557)

Aotearoa New Zealand

  • Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau (Capacity: 43,217)

  • Wellington/Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Capacity: 33,132)

  • Dunedin/Ōtepoti (Capacity: 25,947)

  • Hamilton/Kirikiriroa (Capacity: 18,009)

2. ON THE PITCH

More teams, more competition

This year’s Women’s World Cup was bigger than it’s ever been. It featured more teams – 32, up from 24 – played in front of bigger crowds and watched by bigger audiences around the world on screens large and small.

  • Compared to France 2019 and Canada 2015, goals per game decreased from approximately 2.80 to 2.55 per match.

  • There were more clean sheets in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand than ever before. 43% of performances resulted in a clean sheet – an increase of over 10% compared with the last two editions of the tournament.

  • 84% of players named in squads took to the field in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. This is an increase from 80% at France 2019.

  • 34 goals were scored from set plays, including 28 goals from corners and six from free kicks. Significantly, finalists Spain and England did not concede a goal from a set play throughout the tournament.

  • FIFA’s Technical Study Group identified that teams that went further in the tournament generally had more efficient pressing strategies. 

During the FIFA Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 Group D match between China and Haiti at Hindmarsh Stadium

Progress is the biggest success story of this tournament so far. Emerging nations are showing they can compete at this level and the gaps with the top teams are closing.

Jill Ellis, FIFA Technical Study Group lead

Goals scored, the most ever at a FIFA Women’s World Cup, surpassing the previous highest of 146 at the 2015 tournament in Canada and the 2019 installment in France.

Zambia’s Barbra Banda scored the 1000th goal in FIFA Women’s World Cup history against Costa Rica.

Women's World Cup match win: New Zealand, Philippines, Zambia, Portugal, Jamaica, South Africa, and Morocco.

Time to reach the final: England, and Spain

Time title-winner: Spain

3. FAN EXPERIENCE

The greatest football party in the world

The FIFA Fan Festival™ in all nine Host Cities across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand went beyond football. They offered fans a vibrant destination to enjoy the best in football, music, entertainment, local culture, food, and games.

FIFA Fan Festivals (formerly FIFA Fan Fests) have been a regular feature of the FIFA World Cup since 2006, but this year’s tournament in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand was the first time this unique fan experience was offered in all host cities of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Venues for the FIFA Fan Festivals:

Australian Venues

  • Adelaide/Tarntanya – Festival Plaza

  • Brisbane/Meaanjin – South Bank Parklands 

  • Melbourne/Naarm – Federation Square 

  • Perth/Boorloo – Forrest Place 

  • Sydney/Gadigal – Tumbalong Park 

Aotearoa New Zealand Venues

  • Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau – The Cloud 

  • Hamilton/Kirikiriroa – Claudelands Event Centre 

  • Wellington/Te Whanganui-a-Tara – Shed 6

  • Dunedin/Ōtepoti – Dunedin Town Hall & Glenroy Auditorium

FIFA Fan Festivals held in host cities

Fans visited the FIFA Fan Festivals

Highest single-day attendance of fans visiting the FIFA Fan Festival™ in Melbourne/Naarm (Federation Square).

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA - AUGUST 08: FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura at the fan festival prior to the FIFA Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 Round of 16 match between France and Morocco at Hindmarsh Stadium on August 08, 2023 in Adelaide / Tarntanya, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

Whether you are an avid fan, or a football newcomer, the FIFA Fan Festival™ provides an exciting entertainment space that brings people together beyond football.

Fatma Samoura, FIFA Secretary General

Volunteers

Volunteers contributed greatly to the overall FIFA Women’s World Cup™ and fan experience. Approximately 5,000 volunteers supported the tournament, with each member of the volunteer workforce creating their own unique experience.

  • 95% of volunteers from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

  • 68 nations and all six Confederations represented in the volunteer team

Volunteers make it happen. If you don't have the volunteers to support the tournament, you're not going to get a successful World Cup.

Hilda Jacewicz, Member of the volunteer transport team

Digital Engagement

FIFA surpassed digital traffic for the entirety of the 2019 tournament in just 14 days, welcoming 22 million unique users throughout the Group Stage.

Over 3 billion views of content were achieved on FIFA’s social and digital platforms.

visitors engaged with FIFA’s digital platforms throughout the tournament

By the end of the tournament FIFA’s Women’s World Cup accounts had a cumulative 8.3 million followers – this is the largest global community for women’s football and sport.

4. TICKETING & HOSPITALITY

Transform the tournament experience

Ticketing

This year's FIFA Women's World Cup set the record attendance for a standalone women’s football match in Australia.

  • Over 1,800,000 tickets were sold, comfortably surpassing the tournament’s ticket sales targets (which was initially 1.3 million sales before being upgraded to 1.5 million sales)

  • The record crowd for a football match in Aotearoa New Zealand – women’s or men’s – was broken twice in the space of a fortnight. Match 1 between New Zealand and Norway set a new record attendance figure in Aotearoa (42,137), before this figure was eclipsed by Match 61 between Spain and Sweden (43,217).

FIFA Hospitality Briefing - Spain v Sweden

Total attendance record

Record crowd for a women’s football match in Australia

Record crowd for a football match in Aotearoa New Zealand

Average crowd

Hospitality

Interest in experiencing the FIFA Women’s World Cup™ in Hospitality grew:

  • 46,850 Hospitality guests were hosted at FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, 45% more than at France 2019.

  • The Final between Spain and England featured the largest Hospitality attendance ever at a FIFA Women’s World Cup match, with 6,890 guests welcomed and entertained.

5. COMMERCIAL

Enhance the value of women’s football

Broadcasting

Broadcast figures from around the world were overwhelmingly positive – with records broken across multiples countries on a near daily basis.

Portugal v USA: Group E - FIFA Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023

Learn more about the over 200 global network of broadcast partners that broadcasted the tournament:

The average audience for the whistle-to-whistle coverage of the Final between England and Spain on BBC1 and ITV1 was 13.21 million viewers – the highest Women’s World Cup audience on record in the UK.

La1’s coverage of the Final delivered the second-highest sporting audience of the year in Spain, and became the record FIFA Women’s World Cup audience in the territory.

Over 11 million Australians were reached for Australia’s semi-final vs. England on free-to-air and BVOD (Broadcaster Video on Demand) – the most watched programme in Australian TV history.

Viewers for Australia vs. England semi-final match on Seven’s linear channel and digital platform, 7Plus. According to Seven, this was the most-watched television programme on record.

Of the entire population of New Zealand viewed the tournament across Sky Sport & PRIME (a total of 1.8m).

Viewing audience for Colombia vs. Germany in Germany. This was the second highest TV audience on any channel in Germany throughout 2023 and the largest FIFA Women’s World Cup viewership in the country since the tournament was hosted in Germany in 2011.

Coverage of Colombia’s first match of the tournament secured over 9m viewers. This was over three times the previous top FIFA Women’s World Cup audience in the territory.

China PR produced the highest audience for a single match anywhere in the world, with an astonishing 53.9m viewers watching their group stage encounter with England.

Commercial Partnerships

The tournament was supported by standalone commercial programming, with many commercial affiliates signed for this tournament only, or as dedicated women’s football partners.

The first-ever dedicated Women’s World Cup partnership programme sold out with a strong line-up of brands from across the globe.

The commercial partnership programme for this year's World Cup increased over 100% from 12 (six partners and six host country supporters) during the 2019 tournament to 30 in 2023.

Haiti v Denmark: Group D - FIFA Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023

Licensing/Merchandising

  • 63 FIFA Stores across the ten Stadiums and nine FIFA Fan Festivals – more touchpoints with fans throughout their FIFA Women’s World Cup™ journey than ever before.

  • In 2019 there was no retail presence at FIFA’s Fan Experience sites. In 2023, there was a FIFA Store at each FIFA Fan Festival™, with a two-story flagship store in Sydney/Gadigal.

  • Scarves and beanies were among the items with the highest demand.

Zambia v Japan: Group C - FIFA Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023

More about the tournament

FIFA Women's World Cup 2023™ Sustainability Strategy

The sustainability strategy for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 is aligned with FIFA’s long standing sustainability framework and ambitions, as well as with the social, economic, and environmental priorities in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

FIFA Women's World Cup 2023™ Driving change

With more countries and cultures represented at the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ than ever before, the tournament was a shining example of football’s power to unite the world.