Women’s Cricket World Cup was great, but Matildas home World Cup will be greater

Last Sunday’s T20 Women’s World Cup final between Australia and India was a fantastic sporting spectacle.

The crowd of over 86,000 at the MCG, the highest attendance for a standalone women’s sporting event in Australia, saw the Aussie side win their fifth T20 World Cup.

The local TV ratings were also impressive, with an average audience of 1.231 million Australians tuning into the match.

While the tournament final was a huge success, it is up for debate whether the previous stages lived up to expectations.

Crowds were small for most of the other games throughout the competition, including only 6,161 showing up to the SCG for a rain affected Australia vs South Africa semi-final.

Australia’s opening match of the tournament against India had 13,432 fans in attendance at the Sydney Showground Stadium, the biggest outside of the final.

In comparison, The Matildas drew a crowd of 14,014 in Newcastle last Friday for an Olympic qualifier against Vietnam.

If Australia and New Zealand do win the right to host the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, it’s safe to say crowd figures will be much more impressive than the T20 Women’s World Cup.

Initial projections in Australia and New Zealand’s joint bid book, claim that over 1.5 million will attend the 2023 tournament with an average crowd of 24,000 per match.

Australia will host 24 games throughout the group stages of the tournament and 11 in the knockout stage, with the final to be held at Stadium Australia in Sydney.

The other stadiums that will be used for the tournament in Australia are: the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, Brisbane Stadium, Newcastle Stadium, York Park, Perth Oval, the re-developed Sydney Football Stadium and Hindmarsh Stadium.

If the tournament is priced correctly, it’s hard to see Australia’s bid not being extremely successful for women’s sport.

Crowds for Matildas games in a home World Cup will be huge, but there will also be significant interest in other teams competing in the tournament due to our diverse population.

TV ratings will be big in Australia and around the world, although Australia’s time-zone is not exactly favourable for a major event.

Speaking to SBS TWG, Off The Pitch reporter and experienced FIFA and UEFA watcher James Corbett, believes Australia is the favourite.

“If we look at it as a rational open tender process, you’d like to think [that Australia are in front],” Corbett said.

“The Matildas are arguably Australia’s most popular national team and in a competitive domestic sporting culture have brilliantly carved out a place for ’soccer’ in Australia and the country has, in Sam Kerr, one of the best players on the planet.

“The country has the infrastructure to host it; it’s an event that’s far less dependent on TV revenues as a measure of success, so its distance is less of a factor. It is politically and economically stable.”

Corbett believes FFA’s appointment of James Johnson as new CEO will change the perception of Australia’s governing body and their previous administration faults.

“If you look at the political side, where Australia has faltered in the past is a distance between its administrators from the ‘heart and soul’ of the game.

“Previous FFA CEOs and other leading executives have come from other sports and have been considered aloof from their peers in the global game, who ultimately decide these matters.

“The men’s 2022 World Cup bid – which was arrogant and sulphurous – was a case study in how not to bid for a major competition.

“There’s been a realignment with the true values of football in recent years, and the FFA’s new CEO, James Johnston, has worked for both FIFA and the AFC and knows which buttons to push, as well as being tremendously engaging and good at his job.

“Former Matilda, Moya Dodd, is arguably one of the most powerful people in women’s football worldwide and will know how to navigate the committee rooms.”

This past week the FFA announced that there was an 11% increase in participation in 2019 for women and girls playing the sport of Football in Australia.

These are important figures to show FIFA there is an appetite for women’s football in Australia and a World Cup on home soil will reap huge long-term benefits.

The overall total of close to 2 million people playing football in Australia is also a good indicator that there is a considerable market who will attend a world class footballing event in our backyard.

The Matildas qualified for the Olympics in Japan on Wednesday, a country who is expected to be Australia and New Zealand’s number one rival to host the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

The ball is now in FIFA’s court, with a host announcement to be made in June.

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Philip Panas is a sports journalist with Soccerscene. He reports widely on football policy and industry matters, drawing on his knowledge and passion of the game.

Perth looking to pave new Glory through fresh ownership

The ownership of long-standing A-League team Perth Glory has changed hands, with property mogul Ross Pelligra taking the reins.

The multi-millionaire Melbournian has pledged to Glory fans his intentions of reinvigorating the club into becoming ‘a benchmark club of Australian Football’.

The sole Western Australia club have had to earn their stripes and achievements while accommodating for difficulties, which other A-League clubs have not endured. Initially the Glory were seeking to become a National Soccer League (NSL) tenant in the mid-1970s, given the talent showcased by their state representative side. Due to financial and logistical issues, Western Australia had a football outfit, without a title.

A consortium spearheaded by Joe Claudio, founded a Perth based club, known as the Perth Kangaroos IFC. Although a licence to participate in the NSL never materialised, the club where granted entry into the Singapore Premier League (SPL). Within their maiden, and only season, the Kangaroos breezed through their competition, winning the League Title while remaining undefeated in the process.  Although there was success on the field, the wheels off the field had violently, fallen off.

Italian Australian Entrepreneur Nick Tana capitalised upon the financial failure that was the Perth Kangaroos. NSL representatives, noticing the talent pool within Western Australia given their success in Asia, combined with the potential for another Australian market, led to Perth Glory’s creation, making their debut in the 1996-97 NSL Season, taking place a full year after their materialization.

Acknowledging their early hardships yet successes, the fluctuation from Glory to of the club is somewhat built in its DNA.  Both on and off the pitch, post their success in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Perth had lost its previous ambition. It had taken the club 14 seasons to taste their first A-League Title, with two runners-up medals in A-League Finals.

The consortium that had acquired Tana’s club in 2006, were unable to eclipse the dominance of their previous owner. Recently, the club was almost pawned off to an illegitimate London-based, Cryptocurrency football exchange. Insert, Ross Pelligra.

Perth fans have reason for prosperity, as their new owner is no stranger to the football world. Historic Italian outfit Catania FC had gone into administration in 2022 culminating in all board, playing and non-playing staff to face redundancy. The club where excluded from the Serie C in 2022, with their future in limbo. Pelligra, showcasing passion for his heritage and football, acquired the club in which is the birth place of his mother, in order to save it from termination.

Pelligra and his ambitions resulted in the club swiftly reinterring the third tier of Italian Football, as the club where able to win the Serie D (Group 1), granting promotion. This man oozes passion. In comparison to football club owners on an international scale, in who do have the financial capacity, do not showcase the desire Pelligra possess, in wanting to see his outfits succeed.

To succeed in both off park stability, and on park triumph, football is within Pelligra’s fabric. It is a safe assumption, that Pelligra is not undertaking the financial pressures involved in club ownership, for monetary gain. This is heritage, this is a way of life.

But how is he going to lead Perth to Glory? What does he have within his arsenal?

His passion is combated by football brains in whom represented the Socceroos.

Asian Cup and Socceroo legend Marc Bresciano is rumoured to feature as a prominent figure under the Pelligra hierarchy within the football department. Vince Grella, who is Pelligra’s right-hand man in Catania’s 2023 Serie D Title Win, is also tipped to be involved.

The warning signals haven’t quite rung out yet, however it is best believed that Perth are looking to emphasise the Glory part of their name – the era we are about to see may just be their Glory.

WSL eyeing enormous 150% increase to broadcast rights deal

In a historic first for football in the UK, every single Women’s Super League match is set to be broadcasted live from next season across multiple channels.

The WSL tender document issued to broadcasters this month features all 132 league games, with 56 to be sold exclusively and the remaining 76 available on a non-exclusive basis.

Under the terms of the existing deal that expires at the end of the current season, Sky broadcast 35 matches-a-season and the BBC 22, with the rest streamed for free on the FA’s website.

The tender document is asking for a huge £20 million ($38.48 million) a year TV deal and this 150% increase to the value of its broadcasting deal is far from surprising following the explosion of the women’s game. This figure is set to be confirmed as soon as they can find the right suitors.

In an attempt to gain an increase from the existing £7.75 million ($14.91 million) a year deal, the WSL have responded by making every match available for broadcast, which the league hoped would attract bids from beyond current rights holders Sky Sports and the BBC, It looks to be working.

Sky Sports and the BBC are set to bid again on the rights and extend the current partnership whilst it is said that this potential deal is also attracting networks like TNT Sports and DAZN.

The Premier League and EFL have stood firm on the UEFA blackout that suggests all 3pm Saturday matches are not shown on TV, to encourage locals to attend matches in person. This means the WSL will have to work around it and it is likely that Saturday lunchtime and Sunday afternoons remain as the most common kick-off times.

There is little the WSL are having to do to persuade broadcasters into putting their hands up for these rights, which is a testament to the sport’s current growth and upward trajectory it is trending towards.

FA Director of Women’s football, Kelly Simmons, explained how important it was to secure this monumental broadcast deal.

“While we’ve been developing this it’s been so hard to sit on it because it’s so exciting for the women’s game. It is transformational,” Simmons said in an interview with Guardian Sport.

“When I first came into this role, we said that we really thought women’s football could really break into the mainstream and this is mainstream, this is prime slots on television, big audiences, week in week out.”

This deal in particular launches women’s football into the mainstream and helps improve the quality of the product which goes a long way to opening the eyes of a huge audience to its impact as a sport and socially.

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