WOMEN'S FOOTBALL
Staggering statistics demonstrate FIFA Women’s World Cup growth
- Three African teams have reached the Round of 16 for the first time in the Women’s World Cup
- Nigeria became the first African nation to complete their group unbeaten.
- Morocco is the first African team to win two successive matches and keep clean sheets in successive matches.
The FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 is capturing the hearts and minds of football fans not only in the two co-host countries but across the globe.
At the end of the Group Stage, records have been broken in areas as diverse as ticket sales, broadcast figures and digital media data.
The tournament has also set new benchmarks for performances on the pitch, as well as creating new highs in hospitality and merchandise sales, as well as for the number of participating volunteers.
The tournament is truly going Beyond Greatness to, with sixteen captivating days and sixteen thrilling matches of the ninth edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup remaining.
On the field, countries from all continents are writing their own piece of history. For the first time, teams from all six Confederations won a match at the tournament.
New Zealand became the first team from Oceania to register a victory, while the Philippines, Zambia, Portugal, Jamaica, South Africa, and Morocco also got their first win. Africa’s representatives are breaking all kinds of records.
Three teams have reached the Round of 16. Nigeria became the first African nation to complete their group unbeaten. Morocco is the first African team to win two successive matches and keep clean sheets in successive matches. Fans from the co- host nations, as well as tens of thousands of travelling supporters have fully embraced the biggest women’s sports event on the planet, with an average of 25,476 fans attending the 48 first-round matches, a 29% increase from attendances at France 2019.
By Friday 4 August, over 1,715,000 tickets had been sold, comfortably surpassing pre-tournament ticket sales targets. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the record crowd for a football match in the country– women’s or men’s – was broken twice in 12 days, first in the opening match and subsequently eclipsed when 42,958 fans watched Portugal take on the United States of America.
In Australia, the tournament also set a record for a standalone women’s football match, when 75,784 fans attended Australia’s opener against Republic of Ireland.
At the previous FIFA Women’s World Cup in France, ten matches across the entire tournament attracted over 25,000 spectators. By comparison, this year’s Group Stage has already seen twenty-one matches surpass the 25,000 mark.
Hospitality sales meanwhile are tracking 27% above France 2019, and 534% above Canada 2015. As the tournament pauses for breath before the knock-out stage commences, broadcast figures from around the world have equally been overwhelmingly positive, with records broken across multiples countries on a near daily basis.
Some of the many highlights include the Matildas’ final group game against Canada reaching 4.71 million Australians to become channel Seven’s most watched programme this year. In Aotearoa New Zealand around 1.88 million, a third of the population, has been watching the tournament.
Colombia’s first group match tripled the highest television audience from the previous FIFA Women’s World Cup (2.84 million) and even eclipses all audiences from the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, except for the Final. China PR produced the highest audience for a single match anywhere in the world with 53.9 million viewers watching their team take on England.
In the United States, more fans watched their team play against Netherlands, than any other previous group stage match in history (6.43m).
The skyrocketing television audiences have been replicated on FIFA’s digital platforms. Traffic in the first 15 days has already surpassed the entirety of the 2019 tournament, welcoming 22 million unique users, with an average of 2.4 million users visiting FIFA Women’s World Cup channels daily.
FIFA committed to providing the 32 participating member associations with the same level of support as the men’s teams received at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. So far, 410 training sessions – 88 at the Venue Specific Training Sites and 322 at the Team Base Camp Training Sites – have been facilitated, another first for this tournament.
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For those sessions, over 2,000 cones were provided to teams in Australia and 1,600 in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as 1,536 adidas footballs for training purposes, 1,280 Official Match Balls and 6,748 bibs for teams and match operations.
In the FIFA Fan Festivals, another ‘first’ was achieved, with sites created in each of the nine host cities. To date, over 400,000 fans watched the matches, with Sydney/Gadigal recording the single day record of 17,756 fans.
The tournament across multiple sites has been supported by 5,000 volunteers who have brought the greatest ever FIFA Women’s World Cup™ to life, doubling the number of volunteers in 2019. The overwhelming majority of volunteers are from the two co-host countries, while around 5% of volunteers travelled from sixty-eight different nations, representing all six FIFA Confederations.
The Iranian women’s soccer team crossed the Turkish border into Iran on Wednesday to complete a fraught return journey from Australia, after five members withdrew asylum claims they had lodged there.
Australia had granted humanitarian visas to six players and one support staff member after they sought asylum, saying they feared possible persecution if they returned to Iran.
Concerns over their safety surfaced when several players failed to sing the national anthem at a women’s Asian Cup match earlier this month after the United States and Israel launched the war against Iran. Iranian state television had labelled them “wartime traitors”.
The team, which flew into Istanbul on Tuesday, took a flight to Igdir in eastern Turkey on Wednesday morning.
The players emerged from Igdir Airport, pulling their luggage and chatted in front of the terminal before boarding a bus to the border. One of them briefly smiled and waved at a TV camera before the bus departed. After a trip of around two hours to the frontier, they went through passport control at the Gurbulak border gate before crossing over into Iran.
A bus carrying members of the Iranian women’s national soccer team arrives at the Gurbulak Border Gate, a crossing point between Turkey and Iran, as they travel to their home country after five players withdrew the asylum claims they had lodged in Australia over safety concerns about returning due to not singing the national anthem at a women’s Asian Cup match earlier this month, in the eastern Agri province, Turkey, March 18, 2026. REUTERS/Ali Ihsan Ozturk
The team’s Asian Cup campaign began just as the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They were eliminated from the tournament more than a week ago.
Five of those who had sought asylum in Australia subsequently changed their minds and decided to return home, with Australian media reporting the latest withdrawal on Monday.
They rejoined the rest of the squad in Kuala Lumpur, where the team had been staying since leaving Sydney last week.
The Iranian Football Association (FFIRI) said last week that those who had changed their minds would travel home with the rest of the team “to once again be embraced by their families and homeland.”
Two players are still in Australia and have been pictured training with a local A-League club.
-Reuters
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The two players from the Iranian women’s soccer squad who chose to remain in Australia after seeking asylum have been pictured training with a local A-League club as they begin their new lives in the country.
Midfielder Fatemeh Pasandideh and defender Atefeh Ramezanizadeh were among seven members of Iran’s delegation granted humanitarian visas amid fears of possible persecution if they returned home after competing in the women’s Asian Cup in Australia.
Concerns over their safety emerged after the players failed to sing their national anthem before their opening match on the Gold Coast in the state of Queensland. Iranian state media labelled them as “wartime traitors”, with the team’s campaign beginning as the U.S. and Israel launched air strikes on Iran.
Five members of the group, however, subsequently changed their minds about Australia’s asylum offer and decided to return home.
Queensland-based A-League club Brisbane Roar announced on social media the remaining two players, Pasandideh and Ramezanizadeh, had joined a training session with its women’s team on Monday.
“Brisbane Roar officially welcomed both Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanizadeh to the club’s training facilities…and remain committed to providing a supportive environment for them whilst they navigate the next stages,” CEO Kaz Patafta said.
Photos posted by the club showed the two players meeting the Brisbane Roar squad and taking part in shooting drills.
“Thank you for everything,” wrote Ramezanizadeh, 33, under the post on Instagram.
Pasandideh, 21, also posted on her Instagram story on Monday a photo with FIFA Chief Football Officer Jill Ellis in Brisbane with a caption saying “everything will be fine”.
While the pair began their new lives in Australia, their former teammates made their way home to Iran from Malaysia.
The team was seen at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Monday evening, checking in on an Oman Air flight, although their destination was unclear.
-Reuters
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WOMEN'S FOOTBALL
Three Iranian women soccer players to return home after seeking asylum in Australia
Three members of the Iranian women’s soccer team who had sought asylum in Australia have decided to return to Iran, Australia’s government said on Sunday.
Australia granted humanitarian visas to seven Iranian footballers last week after they sought asylum, saying they feared persecution if they returned home after they failed to sing the national anthem at a Women’s Asian Cup match.
Four of the seven members have decided to leave Australia so far. Another member changed her mind last week.
“After telling Australian officials they had made this decision, the players were given repeated chances to talk about their options,” Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said in a statement.
“While the Australian Government can ensure that opportunities are provided and communicated, we cannot remove the context in which the players are making these incredibly difficult decisions,” he added.
The Iranian Football Association (FFIRI) named the players as Mona Hamoudi, Zahra Sarbali and Zahra Meshkehkar.
“After arriving in Malaysia and joining the rest of Iran’s women’s national football team, the three players will travel to Tehran in the coming days to once again be embraced by their families and homeland,” FFIRI added in a statement.
The Iranian team’s campaign in the Asian Cup started just as the U.S. and Israel launched air strikes on Iran, killing the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They were eliminated from the tournament last Sunday.
-Reuters
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