Three years after the World Cup, women's football still isn't a business
Three years after the World Cup, women's football in Spain still lacks an audience, with tickets priced at 30 euros. An analysis of a business that never takes off.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The World Cup didn't save women's football: the business remains empty
The 2023 World Cup was sold as a turning point for Spanish women's football. Three years after the title was won in Australia, the picture is almost identical to that of five years ago: the league has no television broadcaster for its matches, audiences are poor and the stadiums are half-empty. The paradox takes an economic form: a sporting success that has generated no sustainable demand.
The market doesn't trinc the trophy
The numbers don't lie. Tickets for a Women's World Cup final started at 30 euros, the price of a men's second-division match, and even so the stands didn't fill up. At regular league grounds, attendance is counted in the hundreds, often with family members as the only crowd. By contrast, a men's World Cup final runs into thousands of euros per seat, with demand ten times the stadium's capacity.
The kiss that changed everything
The main factor behind the slump is not sporting but political. Rubiales' kiss to the player after the final, and the institutional noise that trinc, turned a sporting milestone into a battlefield. One camp argues that the audience drawn in during the World Cup was scared off by the noise and never came back. Another believes the problem predated it, with a federation whose management was already highly contested. What is certain is that the "World Cup effect" evaporated within weeks.
Subsidies, markets and uncomfortable comparisons
The underlying economic reading comes down to a single equation: no audience means no sponsorship, and no sponsorship means no wages and no product improvement. Data from other disciplines make the comparison uncomfortable: the Women's Champions League final drew four million viewers, while Spain's bronze-medal match in men's handball attracted around 400,000. And yet handball receives more subsidies than women's football. The conclusion gaining ground: it's not that there's no audience, it's that an elite product has been marketed with second-division regional demand.
One question remains for managers: how long can a professional football operation funded with public money survive when the market — that mechanism so often invoked when convenient — doesn't cooperate? Three years after the World Cup, the answer is still nowhere to be found.
The 2023 World Cup was sold as a turning point for Spanish women's football. Three years after the title was won in Australia, the picture is almost identical to that of five years ago: the league has no television broadcaster for its matches, audiences are poor and the stadiums are half-empty. The paradox takes an economic form: a sporting success that has generated no sustainable demand.
The market doesn't trinc the trophy
The numbers don't lie. Tickets for a Women's World Cup final started at 30 euros, the price of a men's second-division match, and even so the stands didn't fill up. At regular league grounds, attendance is counted in the hundreds, often with family members as the only crowd. By contrast, a men's World Cup final runs into thousands of euros per seat, with demand ten times the stadium's capacity.
The kiss that changed everything
The main factor behind the slump is not sporting but political. Rubiales' kiss to the player after the final, and the institutional noise that trinc, turned a sporting milestone into a battlefield. One camp argues that the audience drawn in during the World Cup was scared off by the noise and never came back. Another believes the problem predated it, with a federation whose management was already highly contested. What is certain is that the "World Cup effect" evaporated within weeks.
Subsidies, markets and uncomfortable comparisons
The underlying economic reading comes down to a single equation: no audience means no sponsorship, and no sponsorship means no wages and no product improvement. Data from other disciplines make the comparison uncomfortable: the Women's Champions League final drew four million viewers, while Spain's bronze-medal match in men's handball attracted around 400,000. And yet handball receives more subsidies than women's football. The conclusion gaining ground: it's not that there's no audience, it's that an elite product has been marketed with second-division regional demand.
One question remains for managers: how long can a professional football operation funded with public money survive when the market — that mechanism so often invoked when convenient — doesn't cooperate? Three years after the World Cup, the answer is still nowhere to be found.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (71 replies).
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