Everything You Need to Know About the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup Taking off This July

The World Cup usually has the most extensive media coverage among all sports events. Its news is always in big headlines, and its highlights, such as Argentina’s spectacular win in the 2022 edition, typically resonate with millions of fans for so long. That aside, we know little about other sports competitions and almost nothing about the Women’s World Cup.

Well, yes. That is true. FIFA also organizes a World Cup football tournament for women, which has existed for some time.

As of 12 June 2023, we are only 38 days away from the FIFA Women’s World Cup kickoff, which is co-hosted this time by New Zealand and Australia. As reported by the BBC, over one million tickets have been sold so far. Aside from any comparison with the Men’s World Cup, the women’s version is a huge event, and this year’s edition is even expected to be super unique rather than the largest and most fantastic one.

So here is everything you need to know about this upcoming tournament.

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Like the original men’s version, the FIFA Women’s World Cup is a contest between national football women’s teams that lasts for a month this year, starting on 20 July and ending on 20 August 2023. Compared to the most recent one, 2019, this year’s competition is witnessing many changes that will make it the best. So, let’s learn some more details.

Host countries

Unlike previous editions, New Zealand and Australia will co-host the Women’s World Cup this time. The Men’s World Cup has imitated that for the 2026 edition, which will be hosted in Canada, the US, and Mexico. It is also the first tournament to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, so if you live anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere and plan to fly there, check the weather map first, then pack accordingly.

In 2019, 10 countries expressed their interest in hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Australia and South Korea, which proposed co-hosting this tournament with North Korea!

Later, Belgium and Bolivia dropped out, while Japan and Brazil took back their bids before voting. In June 2020, Australia and New Zealand were selected to host the tournament, with both countries winning 22 votes compared to Colombia, which earned only 13 votes.

Six stadiums in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, and Adelaide in Australia and four in Auckland, Dunedin, Hamilton, and Wellington in New Zealand will host the matches.

Most of these stadiums were primarily suitable for such a big tournament. Still, they had to undergo some minor renovations to be just perfect. Only the Sydney Football Stadium was upgraded. Renovations were mostly about the pitch, the lighting, and the changing rooms.

The first match will be played on 20 July 2023 in Eden Park, New Zealand’s national and largest stadium, with a capacity of 50,000 spectators. The final game will be hosted in Stadium Australia in Sydney, the largest among all the stadiums used in the tournament, with a capacity of 83,500 spectators.

Stadium Australia is also the world’s 18th biggest stadium by capacity.

Participating countries

Thirty-two nations from six confederations are competing in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, compared to the 24 that contributed to the previous tournament. Seven of those 32, the US, Norway, Germany, Nigeria, Brazil, Sweden, and Japan, have played in every past such tournament.

That said, twenty of the 32 participating nations are first-timers, such as Haiti, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Vietnam, Zambia and Morocco, who made an out-of-this-world achievement in the 2022 Men’s World Cup by defeating mighty Spain and Portugal and winning fourth place.

The Philippines, which has never participated in the Men’s World Cup, plays in this women’s competition for the first time.

Other countries that are rarely, if ever, seen in the Men’s World Cup are participating in the women’s version, such as Panama, Jamaica and Equatorial Guinea.

Prize money and trophy

Besides lifting the golden trophy for the first time since 1986, Argentina was awarded $440 million in 2022 compared to the $400 given to France in 2018 and the $358 million allocated to Germany in 2014. Things are a little, well, sometimes a lot, different for the Women’s World Cup. For the 2023 edition, the winner takes $110 million, which, according to the Internet, is double the amount given in 2019!

The Women’s Worth Cup trophy looks different from the Men’s World Cup trophy. It was designed especially for the 1999 tournament and has been used since then. The trophy has a spiral band with a football at the top and a base that looks like a cone. Interestingly, the names of the previous winners are engraved at the bottom of the base.

This silver, gold-covered trophy is 47 cm tall and weighs 4.6 kg. It is generally smaller than the men’s World Cup trophy.

However, both trophies have a significant difference, thankfully favouring women. Men are awarded the original trophy only during the celebration, but what they take home is just a replica, while FIFA takes back the original trophy. Women, on the other hand, are given an original trophy every time.

The original Men’s World Cup trophy is made of 18-karat gold. The replica, however, is made of bronze with a coat of gold.

Structure

As we will demonstrate in a few paragraphs, the Women’s World Cup had a completely different structure when it first started in the early 1990s than the one it has now. But every time it was played, it witnessed significant changes and expansions that made it a replica of the Men’s World Cup this year, at least regarding how it is played.

So, all 32 nations competing for the Women’s World Cup title are divided into eight groups of four teams. Teams in each group play against one another. The best two of each group progress to the next stage, the Round of 16, also known as the Knockout. Eight teams from the Knockout qualify for the Quarterfinals, and then four teams play in the Semi-finals. Those who lose play over third and fourth places, and the winners play for the title.

In total, 64 matches will be played this year in the Women’s World Cup.

History of Women’s World Cup

In 1922, an international ban on women’s football was imposed, and aside from the reasons why this happened, which no one can be sure of, it continued until 1970.

After Italy hosted the first yet unofficial Women’s World Cup tournament in the early 1970s, many countries lifted that ban. Another game with the same name was hosted in Mexico in 1971, and more versions like this emerged in the following years.

As time went by, more and more countries allowed women to play football again, resulting in new teams. More international tournaments were organized, and the demands for a more constructed one began to pop up. So, continental football tournaments for women were held in Asia in the mid-1970s and Europe in the mid-1980s.

With the widespread popularity of women’s football, a competition was organized in China in 1988 as a prototype to test how applicable it would be to create a Women’s World Cup. This competition was a great success as thousands of people attended the matches. Norway won the title after defeating Sweden 1-0, and China took fourth place after losing to Brazil.

The great success of this tournament confirmed the feasibility of creating a World Cup for women, which came in its first official form in 1991 and was hosted again in China. At the time, only 12 teams were competing, and the US star rose after defeating Norway 

2-1 and being crowned world champion.

China hosted the Women’s World Cup again in 2007, and the US hosted it twice in 1999 and 2003. China was supposed to host the 2003 edition, but it was cancelled because of the SARS outbreak and thus passed down to the US. Sweden, Germany, Canada, and Finland each hosted the event once. The number of attendees has grown significantly, exceeding one million in 2019.

Development

As we just mentioned, only 12 teams competed in the first edition of the Women’s World Cup, which took place in 1991. This was also the case in 1995. Starting from 1999 and up to 2011, the number of teams increased to 16. In 2015, the number was again expanded to 24. This consequently increased the number of matches played, and the attendance of the entire tournament skyrocketed compared to the previous years.

In 2019, when the tournament was hosted in France, 24 teams played 52 matches, and over a million people attended. After the massive success of this edition, FIFA president Gianni Infantino suggested expanding the competing teams once again to 32 teams to match those in the Men’s World Cup. He also proposed doubling the prize money.

The following Women’s World Cup is scheduled for 2027 unless another pandemic, God forbid, or any other global tragedy decides to put the entire planet on hold again. However, the following host country or countries have not yet been chosen.

Champions

Since the takeoff in the early 1990s, Norway and Japan each won the Women’s World Cup once, in 1995 and 2011, respectively. Germany became the champions twice in a row, in 2003 and 2007. That said, the US surprisingly won the four remaining tournaments, two consecutively, in 2015 and 2019.

This indeed provokes wonder.

As it turns out, about 3.5 billion people from every corner of the globe, 43% of our planet’s population, are football fans. This pretty much makes it the most popular sport in the entire world. But for some reason, football or ‘soccer’ in Canada and the US is not that much of a thing. American football, basketball, and baseball are the most popular sports in the US, while ice hockey is Canada’s number one game.

That is why the American ‘regular’ football men’s national team is not as competitive when playing in worldwide competitions such as the World Cup. For instance, it was eliminated in Round 16 after losing to the Netherlands in the 2022 World Cup and did not qualify for the 2018 World Cup. There are many reasons why this is the case in the US, but interestingly, it is only limited to men’s football.

The American women’s football team is so excellent that it has won the World Cup four out of the eight times it has participated in the competition: 1991, 1999, 2015, and 2019.

According to the Internet, this is attributed to many reasons, most of which revolve around the enormous investments in women’s games. The sport is cheaper, requires no equipment, and is accessible to everyone. Those and many other factors made the American women’s national football team highly competitive.

Many even bet they will make it again this year and win the tournament for the third time in a row, making it a bigger-scale hat trick. Hehe, too bad. Sorry.

If you are a football fan and want to see a competition that may sound common but has an entirely different approach, style and performance, then you must watch the 2023 Women’s World Cup. But if you are more into watching the matches live, flying to Australia and New Zealand also makes a perfect holiday, especially at this time of the year.