All Things Sports

Hello everyone, welcome back to All Things Sports! Over the last month, Australia and New Zealand have played host to the record-breaking 2023 Women’s World Cup. As the semifinals roll around, the world of women’s soccer is making history both on and off the field as the tournament that is now guaranteed to have a first time winner has also seen record-breaking ticket sales and viewership across the world. When considering the greater context of women’s soccer, this makes perfect sense. Women’s soccer is on the rise around the globe. More people are watching the games, both in person and on television, and the sport as a whole is growing, with the World Cup in particular growing faster than the men’s game. However, after all that our good friends at FIFA still managed to mess up a golden situation. How? Television rights, one of the main sources of income in sports. 

To understand what exactly happened, a bit of background is required. In the past FIFA sold the rights to broadcast the Women’s World Cup as an add-on to the Men’s World Cup rights. The way that they presented the deal meant that broadcaster’s felt they were getting the opportunity to broadcast the deal for free essentially. However, this year, FIFA sold the rights independently at fees that broadcasters were not happy with along with selling sponsorships just for the women’s tournament. These moves were made with the intention of capitalizing on the growth and garnering increased revenue, but the moves themselves were made with others that were extremely baffling. The first of which was the location of the tournament itself. With the Australia/New Zealand bid being selected, FIFA’s first mistake was set into motion. That is because the time zone for the area is very far away from most major soccer nations. The only major player that is well placed to view the tournament from home is Japan, but Japan’s rights are a whole other debacle that will be covered in a moment. This lack of suitable viewership times allowed broadcasters to lower the cost of the rights. Furthermore, FIFA’s “negotiating” tactics led to them losing 100 million dollars in broadcasting rights money. 100 million. If the corruption wasn’t enough they have to be incompetent at making money so they can be corrupt as well. As if that wasn’t bad enough, president Gianni Infantino was so incensed with the low bidding prices that were the result of his own practices that he threatened to black the tournament out if the bids did not improve. This scare tactic was extremely ineffective and only made the situation worse. Then there’s Japan where FIFA hadn’t reached a deal as of July 13th, days before the tournament started. That is because one of the companies normally responsible for such a deal, Dentsu, had been charged with collusion related to the broadcasting of the 2021 Tokyo olympics. Although a deal was reached at the end, it was still another sign of the chaos that was going on behind the scenes.

Finally there’s arguably the most important part: the promotion. One of the most important things to do when trying to grow an event or attract more viewers is to promote that event as much as possible. This is especially true when talking about an event such as the Women’s World Cup, where there has already been hype around the sport, especially in countries like the United States. What happened with regards to promotion? Well because of the debacle that was FIFA’s handling of the broadcasting rights, promotion of the tournament was delayed until it was too late. That is because companies need the rights in order to be able to promote a tangible product yet promotion to increase viewership was only able to be started in June, a month before the tournament. As someone who has had his own difficulties with promoting a tournament, I can safely say one month is barely enough even for small tournaments like the one that I am running. The bigger ones, like the Women’s World Cup, need months of viewership to attract the desired audience, even when accounting for the large platforms broadcasters have. So not only did FIFA deprive the tournament of money, they also deprived it of viewers as well. The organization that is FIFA never ceases to amaze me. How could one organization be so incompetent at doing things for good reasons, yet so good at doing bad things?

With the Women’s World Cup coming to a close, we shouldn’t let FIFA stain what has been a very exciting tournament permanently. Although most US fans are upset, neutral supporters are seeing a tournament where there will be a first time winner with historic rivals England and Australia playing in one semifinal and Spain playing Sweden in the other. The promise doesn’t stop with this tournament however. The sport as a whole is growing with records constantly being broken and conditions constantly being improved. That is something not even FIFA can take away. And that is good enough(for now).

Credit: How FIFA’s Sale of Women’s World Cup TV Rights Went Wrong WSJ