How does FIFA deliver the biggest match of all?
With a decision on the 2027 Women's World Cup hosts coming soon, WFC delved into how much work it takes for FIFA to deliver the tournament and the final itself...
It’s been a mere eight months since the 2023 Women’s World Cup final, but work is already well under way in terms of preparations for the next edition of the tournament in 2027.
Later this month, we will know who is hosting the next tournament, and while compared to men’s editions the timescale is still much more compact, it is still plenty of time for behind the scenes planning for the event.
The culmination of that is the final itself, which last year saw a record crowd of just over 75,000 cram into Stadium Australia to watch Spain become world champions for the first time in a tight and tense finale against European champions England.
The final is like no other game, in that there is so much more to think about than the 63 games which went before it.
There’s a closing ceremony pre-match and an awards ceremony post-match, and with more eyes on the game around the world than any other, more cameras in operation, more space for media and broadcast, as well as more pressure to ensure the world sees every key moment pre, post and during the match itself.
All in all, it took 29 days to set up all the broadcast structures and 12 days to dismantle it all again.
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Rhiannon Martin has been the Head of the FIFA Women’s World Cup since 2018, helping to lead on and deliver both the 2019 and 2023 tournaments, as well as youth tournaments, and has just returned from trips to Mexico and the USA, Brazil and Belgium, Netherlands and Germany to inspect the three bids for 2027 up close, giving her little time to reflect on what it was like to deliver the biggest women’s tournament to date.
“It was a busy time, you’re right,” Martin laughs. “For the three years leading into the tournament, it was intense. The time zone difference was quite challenging [Martin is based at FIFA’s HQ in Zurich], as there was a great team of local experts in Australia and New Zealand on the ground.
“Since the tournament, we’ve been doing a series of debriefs to really learn lessons on what can we improve moving forward. We’ve written a very in-depth operational report with all the different functional areas making recommendations for the future, but also looking at what went well.”
Martin has been part of FIFA since the late 1990s, initially as a legal assistant, before becoming an assistant event manager in the early 2000s and took on the role of Project Lead for the 2003 Women’s World Cup in the USA.
Since then, she has held various roles helping to deliver major tournaments in both the men’s and women’s game, but rarely has she been involved in a game which saw 75,000 supporters in the stadium, particularly at a women’s tournament, compared to the 58,000 in Lyon in 2019.
So, what is it actually like delivering the biggest tournament and final in the sport?
“I think for people who just come to the match they probably think it’s pretty straight-forward,” she laughs. “There’s a lot of different facets. The first part is ensuring we have a good framework for the event. We have skilled Project Managers based in Zurich, Australia and New Zealand, who worked with the FIFA departments to establish a structured project plan with timelines, milestones, deliverables, issue tracking and risk management to make sure we were on track.
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