Until this year, the TV rights to the World Cup in men’s and women’s football have been sold together. And with it brought with it an antiquated symbolism of women as inferior appendages to men. At the same time, the International Football Association (FIFA) and their sales agents have been waiting. That the rapid development of interest in women’s football would make their commercial value so great that they could start making big money selling the television rights to the major championships separately. For the World Cup in 2023 in Australia and New Zealand, they thought the time had come. They were wrong. The year after the men’s World Cup in Qatar, willingness to pay is so low that Fifa had to threaten black screens in many of the biggest soccer nations in Europe, including Great Britain and France. Even in Germany, which is the favorite to become the next World Cup organizer in 2027, they were reportedly willing to mark their position by not showing football’s biggest party. Fortunately, that was not the case. But this primitive negotiation tactic shows how wrongly they had judged their market. The all-powerful Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, went so far as to accuse the TV companies in the countries in question of not respecting the women. Those who do not want to contribute to the already gigantic money bin of football’s world body. Wrong time Fifa is still one billion kroner away from its revenue target. But now no one cares anymore. Football is a world sport and should be. Perhaps the best attacking player in the world, Australian Sam Kerr, also gets the opportunity to excel at home. But there is a feeling that it was a few years too early to have the World Cup in a time zone particularly ill-suited to the TV audience in the largest markets for women’s football, in Europe and America. In addition, both distances and costs are at such an enormous level that very few fans from the participating nations will travel to contribute to the month-long football feast. HOME TRACK: Sam Kerr and teammates heading out for Australia’s warm-up against France last week. Photo: MARTIN KEEP / AFP It took over 70 years from the men’s first World Cup until they dared approach these time zones, when Japan and South Korea shared the host in 2002. For the women it took 32 years. Now it is up to Australia and New Zealand to disprove all pessimism from us European traditionalists. Wrong price This WC is a little too much about rights. Also of the more human kind. For the soccer women, they are still fighting a tough battle for recognition. Not least this applies to the monetary bonuses they are paid for participating in the World Cup. After intense pressure from the players themselves, Fifa finally had to take the drastic step of radically increasing these amounts as recently as last winter. For the first time, each of the 732 World Cup players was to be guaranteed an amount of around NOK 300,000 just for participating. For a sport where the average salary among professional players worldwide is around NOK 150,000, this is necessarily a pure paradigm shift. For Ada Hegerberg and the other world stars, this is not of decisive importance, but such amounts can be decisive for the players from some of the smaller nations who have been given the opportunity to participate, after the World Cup has now been expanded to 32 countries, including the Philippines and Haiti. GET PAID: Haiti is qualified for the WC, and the players are therefore guaranteed NOK 300,000 each. Photo: JUNG YEON-JE / AFP For the team that ends up as world champions on 20 August, the amount will end up being NOK 3 million each. Directly paid, not via the national associations, as previously. At least you thought so. The feeling of being part of a continuous election campaign for Gianni Infantino and not a real equality project is still striking. Wrong message When Infantino arrived in Australia on Tuesday, he held his usual pre-World Cup presidential press conference. It all started with a smiling announcement that he wasn’t going to say anything about how he felt, other than that he was tired but cheerful. This was a pleasantly self-deprecating reference to the already legendary speech he gave before the opening of the men’s World Cup in Qatar last year. Through an hour long monologue came the much talked about series of emotional analyses, including that he felt African, gay, Qatari and much more at the same time. To the general astonishment and ridicule. PRESIDENT: Gianni Infantino has been Fifa president since 2016. Photo: SAEED KHAN / AFP But what caused concern among many players this time was that Infantino partially went back on the promise that the bonuses before the first game should go straight to the players. Now the message was that they encouraged the national confederations to pass on the money. This is exactly what the women have worked so hard to avoid. Because the culture in many of the national federations is constructed only for the personal gain of the male leaders, no matter how they try to camouflage it. Only wrong Infantino then said that from now until the World Cup ends on August 20, he would only talk about positive topics. As if anyone doubted. No criticism. Only smile. No talk of rainbow armbands. No talk of the widespread homophobia in football, even in Australia. No talk of the fight many of the players’ squads are fighting against their national federations for the right to negotiate collectively on bonuses. Even one of the big tournament favourites, England, has not got an agreement in place. The players eventually had to issue a communiqué in which they postponed the discussion until after the World Cup. No talk of the Norwegian challenges in creating a strong team, despite two world stars in Ada Hegerberg and Caroline Graham Hansen. WORLD STARS: Caroline Graham Hansen and Ada Hegerberg. Photo: Lise Åserud / NTB Norway’s challenges are also in a way representative of the growing prevalence of women’s football. We no longer have the world’s best ladies, which we certainly had in 1995. And no one wants such a small nation to have that either. Women’s football has become big. And then you want the biggest markets to also win the tournaments. The next time there is a World Cup for men and women, in 2026 and 2027, Gianni Infantino has promised that the prize money will be the same. No one believes it’s real. In 2023, women will receive a quarter of what men received in Qatar. But now it’s the WC party anyway. And not one negative word in one month. And to paraphrase Gary Lineker: Football is a simple game. 22 women run around after a ball for 90 minutes. And in the end, the USA wins.
ttn-69
The fight for the rights – news Sport – Sports news, results and broadcast schedule
