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300,000 tickets sold and counting for 'era defining' Rugby World Cup
By Owain Jones
The countdown to the Women’s World Cup is well and truly on. In 85 days, the sporting world’s gaze will turn its attention to a tournament which could see records tumbling on a daily basis.
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With over 300,000 tickets sold already, organisers are bullish the tournament will be the biggest and best edition of the tournament since its inception in 1994.
Tasked with bringing this celebration of women’s rugby alive is Managing Director of the Women’s World Cup, Sarah Massey and Sally Horrox, the Chief of Women’s Rugby, at World Rugby.
RugbyPass spoke to the duo at the tournament launch event about the challenges and opportunities lay ahead of them. On ticket sales, a key barometer of a tournament’s financial health, Massey was confident they were on track for stellar numbers.
“Ticket sales have been amazing. The fact we’ve sold this many tickets this far out from the event is hugely encouraging. We’ve seen great ticket sales across-the-board in every single venue and we know momentum is building across our eight iconic host locations and their communities. It really is going to be incredible and our opening match at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light between England versus the USA on August 22 is going to be some spectacle.”
For Horrox, the final countdown Is the culmination of three years of painstaking planning. “I joined just before the World Cup in 2022 in New Zealand, so to have that runway into the tournament…well everybody is getting incredibly excited. It now feels very real and it’s going to be phenomenal.”
One of the key tenets to the tournament’s success, Massey believes, is in securing a terrestrial TV partner in the BBC. “It was really important from the beginning that we went free-to-air because we knew it would attract new audiences. We also knew that with events like the Euros, and the summer of sport the BBC had lined up, we could build even more momentum for women’s sport and we’ll be the centrepiece of that because we’re the hosts in the UK.”
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Horrox agrees that to grow the game in the UK, and beyond, dropping barriers to access the tournament was fundamental to its success. “Whilst women’s rugby is one of the fastest growing audiences in the UK for women’s sport, we still need to work really hard on building reach and awareness. We will never take that for granted.
“For us, it was about making sure the live action reached every corner of the country, whilst maintaining that engagement with those eight venues and the communities around them. I think it is going to make a real difference.”
Massey says they are currently exceeding all KPIs but maintains there’s still much to do, working with host locations, stakeholders at the RFU and UK Sport’s legacy programme. Her laser-focus remains the same; to make it an unforgettable tournament.
“It will be era defining because of the profile raised through BBC coverage. It will be era-defining in terms of the standards provided for those players and teams and it can be era-defining in terms of the number of people who have engaged in women’s sport, whether as an official, coach, player or fan.”
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For Horrox, the opportunities are limitless, but when the tournament culminates in what organisers hope will be a sold-out Allianz Stadium in front of 82,000 fans, the game will benefit as a whole.
“We recognise the women’s game as the biggest driver of growth within rugby globally. Girls, in particular, are the fastest growing segment of our sport and we believe it is growing at approximately 7-10% year on year. Looking to 2029 and beyond to 2033, if you look at that growth right now, women and girls take up about 25% of the playing population and we’re looking to move that up to 33%. In time, we want to move it to an equitable position where we can share 50-50 with the men’s game. That has to be the ultimate aim.”
With such astonishing growth, Massey believes it’s no surprise stars are using their profiles and transcending rugby, with the likes of Ilona Maher, Portia Woodman-Wickliffe and Ellie Kildunne showing the way in what is possible in inspiring the next generation.
“I think we’ve shown, especially within women’s sport, that athletes showing their personalities are absolutely key. Fans want to understand their back stories and what goes on behind the scenes. That’s what people connect with and I think that’s become a USP of women’s sport.
“Their stories are told to inspire all of those young women and girls to look up to them as role models. By putting themselves out there on social media and addressing some of their challenges you get that authenticity and connection. As we say, ‘if you see it, you can be it’.”
The ambition is to try and get 100,000 new participating female players by the end of 2027 and World Rugby are looking to launch programmes around participation and careers. Massey says they are looking at using this tournament as a platform to create opportunities for women and particularly from underrepresented groups.
“We’ve asked ourselves, ‘how can we make sure all of the people in front of camera, behind the camera, our DJs, musicians, commentators, match officials and everyone working at this tournament can be given a platform to be part of the sports industry longer term.”
Horrox finishes on an uplifting note. “I keep saying it, but it is the biggest global celebration of women’s rugby ever. We just want to harness the power, influence and growth of the women’s game into this competition and take women’s rugby to the next level.”
Buy tickets to the Women’s Rugby World Cup here.
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Going back to uk for a holiday to see family. My gf got us tickets to see canada play in york.
They would have sold 7 more at £95 each fo finals day Twickenham if it had been possible to know exactly which seats you were buying at the time. Even knowing the block would have been sufficient but not prepared to shell out a lot of money without knowing where the seats were.
No, they wouldn’t have sold 7 more.
For one thing, the maximum you could buy during the initial sale period was 4 at a time. For another, you can take a look at the seating chart for the Final here: https://tickets.rugbyworldcup.com/EDP/Event/Index/27?position=1
You’ll notice that there are no blocks with tickets for sale. There may still be some tickets that are currently held back for hospitality, sponsors or other unions that will be released later, but essentially the entire stadium is sold out.
It’s absolutely standard that for sporting events where demand exceeds supply you don’t get to choose your seats. That was the case for the 2012 Olympics, for the 2015 RWC and it’s the case for the 6 Nations and Autumn Internationals every year, except occasionally when the opposition is a Tier 2 nation and the game is unlikely to sell out
at the last world cup in new zealand-the black ferns got great crowds for their games and the media tended to focus on that-outside those games though the crowds were very poor with many games played out with empty stands. While we are getting this headline number of 350,000 tickets-are most of those the england games and the final? do we have any idea what ticket sales are for the non- england games? surely how successful a tournament is depends on attendances at the non host matches? it would be great to hear some details for ticket sales for some of the pool games that dont involve england.
If you add up the capacity of all the venues where England have pool matches, plus allow for a QF and SF at Ashton Gate (on the basis that England can only play in one of each) and the Final, then there are 263,325 seats available for matches that England can play in…
So they have sold at least 86,675 of the tickets for non-England games.
The total available capacity is 516,748 (they’ve done several of the non-England pool games as double headers) so 350,000 is 68% of the capacity. I suspect that they will hit 400,000 and if the tournament catches the public imagination I could see more being sold once it starts.
You can see the number of individual tickets still on sale here, if you click through to individual matches and zoom in on the maps: https://tickets.rugbyworldcup.com/Events
Only about 15-20% of the total tickets are still showing as available. I suspect that’s because there are some blocks of tickets still being held back for hospitality, sponsors and unions that could go on sale.
What’s really encouraging is that there are no games that are looking empty. The lowest attendances are in York and Salford, and even there the grounds look to be 40-50% full.
The huge advantage of holding a tournament like this in England (or France) is that you have the infrastructure to use venues of various sizes (from 8.500 to 82,000), and fans from a range of countries within easy travel distance.