FIFA president Gianni Infantino has revealed the “greatest and biggest and largest Women‘s World Cup ever” has generated close to $900 million in revenue.
But it was only enough for the tournament to “break even” and didn’t paint an image of having the ability to enhance prize cash for future tournaments in direction of ranges loved by the lads’s recreation.
Speaking on the FIFA Women’s Football Convention in Sydney on Friday, Infantino revealed the governing physique was ready to subsidise the event which was staged throughout Australia and New Zealand.
But surging crowds with greater than two million tickets offered and unprecedented curiosity because the Matildas particularly garnered the eye of the entire of Australia helped push FIFA’s earnings to only over $890m ($US570m).
Infantino stated it was the second-highest revenue generated from any world sporting occasion, behind solely final yr’s males’s World Cup in Qatar.
Prize cash nevertheless stays markedly completely different, with a prize pool of $170m for ladies and $680m for males.
The FIFA boss conceded there was room to nonetheless do “much better” for the ladies’s recreation however stated the income confirmed their technique, which included taking the event out of the northern hemisphere regardless of time zone challenge for broadcasters, labored.
“Some voices were raised, where it cost too much, we don‘t make enough revenues, we will have to subsidise,” he stated.
“And our opinion was, ‘Well, if we have to subsidise, we will subsidise’, because we have to do that.
“But actually, this World Cup generated over $US570m in revenues, and so we broke even.
“We didn’t lose any money and we generated the second-highest income of any sport, besides of course the men’s World Cup, at a global stage.
“More than half a billion. There are not many competitions, even in men‘s football, who generate more than half a billion.
“This shows what? This shows that our strategy was probably not too bad. That, of course, we have to do still much better.”
Infantino stated the event additionally defied the critics who stated it wouldn’t work in Australia and New Zealand.
“We did it in spite of the critics who wouldn‘t believe in countries, which are not ’football countries,’” Infantino stated.
“Why are you playing in winter away from normal — ’normal’ was the word I heard — time zones? Imagine, as if you have an abnormal time zone here. [They said] it wouldn’t work. Well, it did work.”
He additionally defended the choice to extend the variety of groups by eight to 32 declaring the outcomes confirmed FIFA was “right to do so”.
“We decided to increase the number of participating teams in the World Cup from 24 in France to 32 now,” Infantino stated in his opening remarks of the conference. ”
“I remember when we decided to do that, of course, the usual critics — which are less and less by the way, but there are still a few — they were saying it‘s not going to work.
“The level is too different. You will have 15-0 scores. It will be bad for women‘s football. It will be bad for the image of women’s football.’ I’m sorry, but FIFA was right. As it happens quite often in the last years, FIFA was right once more.
“From the 134 countries that entered the qualification for the 2015 Women‘s World Cup before I became FIFA president, we have now 188 countries in the FIFA ranking because everyone believes now there is a chance to shine on the global stage.”
Source: www.news.com.au
