FIFA Women’s World Cup gets no love in Beijing

Photo: Granda/Wikimedia Commons

Folks, it's about time to get involved in bringing more eyeballs to the women's game

The Women’s World Cup (WWC) kicked off last Friday. But no one really knows about it. To be fair, we were late reporting about the competition in Paris and in an effort to ensure that we give a list of places that screen it, we gave a call to 26 bars. 

None of them had arranged for special screenings, much less offer deals. Which was unlike the great deals offered last year during the men's edition. 

The WWC is comparatively young of course, the inaugural tournament happening in China just in 1991. Though this year’s championship, described by CNN as the ‘most important in history’ and by Time as, ‘the most anticipated Women’s World Cup ever,’ the WWC's still not getting even a quarter of the coverage the men’s FIFA World Cup receives. To put it in perspective, in Beijing, there are more screenings of Game of Thrones than there are for WWC, which as we reiterate from our calls made earlier today, stand at zero.

It's hardly fair, but it's endemic even within the tournament. This year sees the most celebrated female player of the year, UEFA Champion and Ballon d’Or winner Ada Hegerberg of Norway, opting out of the national team due to inequality in football. Even three-time WWC champion, the US Women's National Team – their male counterparts didn’t even qualify for World Cup 2018 – had to file a gender discrimination suit for equal pay.

Photo: Pexels

While the WWC has grown from 16 to 24 qualifying teams and despite the UEFA Champions League launching a women’s soccer initiative to double the amount of women footballers, WWC still lags behind in brands sponsorships and viewership. 

More can be done, and perhaps it could start with you. 

If you’re headed to one of the sports bars in Beijing from now till July 7, which is when the final takes place, just ask the wait staff if they can switch channels and put the FIFA Women’s World cup on. If there are enough people interested, perhaps we’ll get a stellar line-up of great screening promotions in 2023.

Also a call out to sports bars in Beijing: get in touch and we’ll happily list your WWC promotions you have and put them on top of our events listings till the competition is over.

Scroll down to see a complete schedule of matches

Photos: FIFA.com/Official group phase schedule for the 2019 WWC in Beijing time

In the meantime, here are some ways for you to catch the FIFA Women’s World Cup. The tournament will be only be televised live on CCTV5, though in Mandarin exclusively. So if you have cable, you'll be able to watch the game either at home, online or on the network's mobile apps on iOS or Android - if you don’t mind listening to Chinese sports commentators. Another free way to live-stream the event is through First Row (http://firstrowas.eu), a free online sports streaming site.

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