Time to get excited as World Cup starts

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

One of the world’s great sporting events kicks off in Auckland tonight with the opening match of the FIFA Women’s World Cup between New Zealand and Norway.

The opening ceremony starts just after 6.30pm, half an hour before the Football Ferns, ranked 26th in the world, take on 12th-ranked Norway.Later in the night the other half of the expanded 32-team draw kicks off in Sydney with co-hosts Australia playing the Republic of Ireland.

It is only the ninth edition of the Women’s World Cup but its popularity has escalated to the point that more than 1.1 billion people watched officially broadcast matches at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France.

The average live match audience of 17.3m viewers was more than double that for the 2015 edition in Canada and the final, in which defending champions USA defeated the Netherlands 2-0, was seen live by 260m people. Memorable footage of US co-captain Megan Rapino celebrating the first of those goals, her sixth of the tournament — earning her the Golden Boot — has helped excite a generation of young players and new fans.

Organisers of this year’s event hope the total television audience will grow to up to 2 billion; that compares to a staggering 5 billion who engaged with the Men’s  FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022, where the final was viewed by close to 1.5 billion people.

While excitement levels in this country have not yet matched the scale of the tournament and the global interest coming our way — with sluggish ticket sales leading to FIFA announcing last week that 20,000 tickets would be given away across our four host cities (Dunedin, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland) — overall ticket sales are already a record and almost 1.5 million are expected to watch games across the two host countries.

Incidentally, this is the first time the tournament has been hosted by multiple countries, and its first time in the Southern Hemisphere.

The USA are firm favourites to win their third title in a row, with European champions England one of the next most fancied sides along with Germany, Sweden, Spain, France and co-hosts Australia. World rankings are USA 1, Germany 2, Sweden 3, England 4, France 5 and Spain 6. Australia are ranked 10th in the world.

The official slogan for the tournament is “Beyond Greatness”, which FIFA says is about “pushing yourself  beyond your limits, beyond what you think is possible, beyond your doubts and expectations”.

It’s time now for New Zealanders to get behind the Ferns and the many footballing stars who will be showcasing their talents, as their teams vie for a shot at the title of best in the world over the next  month.