The 2023 Women’s World Cup, “the biggest and best of all time”, generated more than 570 million dollars (520 M EUR), welcomed Friday the president of Fifa Gianni Infantino. The Swiss leader also called on women, strong from this success, to “choose the right fights (…) to convince us, us men, of what we must do”.
“I tell all women – and you know I have four daughters, so I have a few at home – that you have the power to change,” he told the Football Convention. Women’s Football, to lukewarm applause.
The president’s rather vague declaration of intent – “With men, with Fifa, you will find open doors. Push them, they are open”, he added – provoked an ironic reaction from Norwegian striker Ada Hegerberg who wrote on X (ex-Twitter): “Working on a small presentation to convince the men. Who’s up for it?”.
“Second most money-making sporting event, excluding Men’s World Cup”
The competition co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand “exceeded $570 million in revenue, which allowed us to break even,” Infantino explained from Sydney. “We haven’t lost any money and this is the second most money-making sporting event, apart from of course the Men’s World Cup, on the world stage,” he said. -He insists.
“It shows that our strategy was not too bad, but of course we still have to do much better. But we are on the right track”, supported the Italian-Swiss, re-elected in March for a new term running until in 2027.
Fifa last February announced record revenues for the 2019-2022 cycle of some $7.6 billion, up 18% from the previous period. President Infantino defended the choice to expand the Women’s World Cup to 32 participating selections, which until then had only 24.
“Fifa was right”
“They were saying, ‘it’s not going to work, the level is too different, you’ll have scores of 15-0, it will be bad for women’s football and its image,'” he said. “But I’m sorry, Fifa got it right. We had many countries around the world who thought they had a chance to participate. Everyone now believes there’s a chance to shine on the world stage,” he said. the boss of world football.
The ninth edition of the World Cup, “the biggest and best of all time” according to Infantino, was marked by the emergence of new nations, such as Jamaica, Morocco and South Africa which reached for the first times the knockout stage.
Fifa has also tripled the allocations compared to the 2019 edition in France, bringing the “prize money” to a historic total of 152 million dollars (135 M EUR), ten times more than for the 2015 World Cup in Canada. . The final will oppose Spain to England on Sunday, in Sydney, two selections who dream of adding their names to the list.