According to a report from France 24, a foreign news outlet, ticket sales for the women’s soccer World Cup in Australia and New Zealand are so slow that one tournament official admitted to having sleepless nights about the sales.
The women’s World Cup will begin on July 20th, when New Zealand will play Norway in Auckland and Australia will play the Republic of Ireland in Sydney. The United States team is the defending champion.
Apparently, however, only 990,000 tickets have been sold so far and, of those, only 220,000 have been sold for New Zealand matches. That’s despite about half the matches taking place in New Zealand.
Speaking about that, Jane Patterson, the World Cup’s New Zealand Chief Operating Officer, said, “If anything is keeping me awake at night, it’s ensuring that New Zealanders maximise this opportunity.” And that’s despite tickets to the World Cup being dirt cheap. “We’ve priced tickets to be affordable, starting at NZ$20 (US$12) for adults and $10 for children -– cheaper than going to the movies,” she noted.
The United States is the defending champion in the event. It won the last event, which was in France, with a team led by Megan Rapinoe. At that World Cup, which took place in 2019, Rapinoe refused to put her hand over her heart for the National Anthem because of the Trump presidency. That was despite it being less than a week before the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
Speaking on her decision not to do so in May of that year during an interview with YahooSports, the openly gay soccer player said, “I’ll probably never put my hand over my heart.” She added, “I’ll probably never sing the national anthem again.”
She also said, when asked if it “feels odd” to wear the Team USA jersey while Trump was in office, “Not really because I feel like I’m a walking protest.”
She then added, “I feel like it’s kind of defiance in and of itself to just be who I am and wear the jersey, and represent it. Because I’m as talented as I am, I get to be here, you don’t get to tell me if I can be here or not. So it’s kind of a good ‘F you’ to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don’t look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him. Scary. Really scary. Ahh, disturbing.”
Rapinoe, though still on the team in 2023, is no longer the captain nor is she a starting player. Speaking about that, she said, “I mean, my role on the team is completely different, which I actually really love and enjoy. I mean, I still love to play and I want to play all the time. I think it’s position specific. Like not every position can, you know, only be playing limited minutes or having the kind of role that I do.”
It remains to see if she’ll put her hand over heart for the Anthem now that Biden is in office instead of Trump.
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