FIFA: “We Approach The Women’s World Cup Just Like The Men’s”

FIFA used to have the very biggest global competition in any team sport in the Men’s World Cup. What we saw with the Women’s World Cup in France this summer confirmed that it now clearly has two of the very biggest. In the midst of the closing stages of the attention-grabbing France 2019 tournament, FIFA Chief Tournaments & Events Officer Colin Smith spoke to iSportconnect TV in Paris about the mega-event.

Highlighting the appeal of the tournament is this fact from China, whose own national team did not fare terribly well (third in the group stage, albeit in a tough group). Live coverage of the final between the USA and The Netherlands aired in on CCTV 5 at 23:00 local time and achieved an average audience of 4.913 million with a share of 8.1 per cent, nearly four times the channel’s average share of viewing. This audience exceeded the numbers for any of the Chinese team’s competing matches in the tournament, with the exception of their first group match against Germany (12.032 million), which had the advantage of airing earlier aired at 20:00 local time.