Women's World Cup
Brazil has won 2027 FIFA World Cup hosting rights, following an open vote from the FIFA Congress in Thailand on Friday. While the win was expected in the weeks leading up to the formal vote, the decision is still a historic one — it’s the first Women’s World Cup to not just be held in Brazil, but all of South America.
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Brazil now has just about three years to pull off everything they have planned from their bid. So what can we expect? Let’s turn to their own document, the bid book they submitted to FIFA in December detailing their vision, logistical plan and financial expectations. Notably, all of these are very much from the point of view of the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF), though FIFA’s technical analysis of their bid largely agreed — but one red flag from the competing bid may have played a big role in Brazil’s win, too.
Bid books don’t usually reflect the reality that we’ll see in three years, but there’s still plenty of value in examining the plan as it stands now — plus the way the CBF presents its current vision of women’s football in the country as it stands now, and how they imagine the future.
Brazil’s bid is titled “As Natural as Football,” a reference to two key ideas from the federation: normalizing women’s football in the country and breaking down existing societal prejudices and barriers around the women’s game, as well as a more literal environmental sustainability angle. The CBF wants to use the 2027 World Cup as a platform for environmental issues like climate and biodiversity protection.
The bid book states multiple objectives for hosting the World Cup, but the main ones are increasing participation in women’s football across all levels, increasing engagement around the sport, and perhaps most critically in Brazil’s eyes, making it financially sustainable.
One notable element of their plan for growth of the sport is a requirement that “all (men’s) clubs wishing to take part in high-level national and continental competitions must now provide a structure for a women’s team.” The bid book doesn’t get into the particulars of what qualifies as “structure” and if that means a women’s team must be fielded or what level of investment has to be guaranteed. They have set targets with CONMEBOL to increase the number of women’s teams in the country.
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Brazil has the support of their confederation for their bid, which is necessary for logistics but also because this marks the first time the Women’s World Cup will be hosted in South America.
The bid book openly addresses the fact that Brazil banned women’s football for decade (more on that in the next section), and centers the idea of normalizing the sport, but there are still some choices in the language of the bid book that — from an outsider’s perspective — show that this is going to be a large project indeed.
For example, the federation uses its history on the men’s side, with the institution of the national team in 1914, to justify its bid early on. “It seems only natural to us that Brazil, world-renowned for its remarkable accomplishments in men’s football, should submit its proposal to host the ultimate showcase for women’s sport and football: the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027.”
But it’s in the description of the branding for their bid where things get a little weird. “The main inspiration for our BID brand is water, which symbolizes the essence of women,” the section reads. “Both women and water have fluidity, yet they possess unstoppable power and the ability to generate life. For the logo, the artist drew inspiration from curved shapes, fluid movements and colors that symbolize water and femininity.”
Brazil wasn’t the only country to ban women from playing football, but it does have the unfortunate honor of being the only country on the list to have that ban enforced by law. In 1941, the president of Brazil at the time, Getúlio Vargas, issued Decree 3,199 which not only established the country’s national sport council, but also prohibited women from participating in organized sports of any kind, including football. It took until 1979 to repeal it. Brazil’s first selection of a women’s national team happened in 1986, only a year behind the USWNT’s first matches in 1985.
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“The urge to play football, however, has always been in the very nature of Brazilian women,” the bid book reads in this history section. “The pioneers of women’s football in Brazil required drive and determination to open the first doors.”
The CBF has promised a women’s football development strategy to FIFA, which was due at the end of March. The summary from the bid book: “The strategy will focus on six pillars, with the aim of making football accessible to girls and women, strengthening the competitive pyramid, improving the path of national teams, promoting the talent ecosystem, achieving financial sustainability and molding the identity of Brazilian women.”
Brazil has seen the same growth in viewership and attendance that many other countries are enjoying. In September 2022, Corinthians had 41,070 in the NeoQuimica Arena for the Brazilian championship, setting a new record. (Not in the bid book: the winners of the women’s title received only about $200,000 USD compared to the men’s title purse of $6.3 million.)
Brazil bid for the 2023 World Cup as well, before eventually withdrawing that bid in 2020 — citing the COVID-19 pandemic’s financial impact and throwing their support behind Colombia. That original bid was planned for eight host cities; this time around Brazil’s aiming for 10.
The CBF has proposed that the 2027 tournament run from June 24 to July 25 — and the federation has also promised that all major domestic tournaments and the top two tiers of both the men’s and women’s pro leagues will all be suspended during this time. That ensures stadiums and training sites will be free, but as the bid book also notes: “we can guarantee that all attention in the football ecosystem in Brazil will be focused on this international competition.”
It’s a good selling point.
They included a proposed schedule for the tournament across those dates and the 10 host cities: Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Cuiabá, Fortaleza, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. Every stadium chosen in the host cities was either built for the 2014 Men’s World Cup, or refurbished at that time.
But Brazil — as of the bid book submission anyway — does not plan to use those existing stadiums to their full capacity. By reducing capacity, the CBF argues that they can meet the average attendances expected for a Women’s World Cup. “This will allow us to increase or decrease capacities based on the final draw and future ticket sales requirements,” the bid book says.
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Not only are they reducing the gross capacity of each stadium, but the capacity is then reduced further for “seat kills” — seats that can’t be sold because they are either obstructed or removed for VIP areas or media tribunes.
Here’s a breakdown of each stadium, including gross capacity vs. the “net capacity” (the final proposed number listed in the bid book after seat kills).
They address such massive logistical pieces as hotels and transportation — and one key promise is tucked away here: “Brazil’s bid is also committed to providing free transport to and from all stadiums for clients, including all spectators, by making agreements with responsible public transport bodies in Host Cities. We have learned important lessons from the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and negotiations will take place to provide free transport to tournament fans as a key priority.”
We all know, though, that money is the real driver of many conversations around who hosts major tournaments and why.
Brazil notes that the operating costs of its women’s program still are larger than incoming revenue, but that the federation invests “an annual amount of approximately US$25 million in its Competitions and National Teams.”
Brazil lays out its estimates: if every single ticket is sold across all categories (1.7M tickets in total, as planned now), that’s about $54.7 million in revenue (all figures in the bid book are given in U.S. dollars). They’ll get another $29.5 million from hospitality packages, and about $1.5 million each in merchandise and food/beverage sales. The final piece of their roughly $100 million estimate for competition-related revenue is $10 million in sponsorship.
Last year at the conclusion of the 2023 World Cup, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said the tournament jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand broke even by generating over $570 million. That number was overshadowed by Infantino’s speech informing women to “pick the right fights.”
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In FIFA’s technical assessment, released earlier this month, Brazil is determined to have a “strong commercial position,” largely because the costs of running a World Cup there are expected to be nearly $50 million cheaper than FIFA’s baseline projection. Brazil gets a boost from its timezone too, keeping game times friendly for North and South American viewers, and if games are kept relatively early in the evening, not too terrible for Europe either.
“When it comes to venue-related revenues, the Brazil 2027 bid is projected to exceed 2.1 million tickets during the tournament aided by the large stadium capacities proposed,” FIFA’s analysis reads, with those numbers bumped up from what’s presented in Brazil’s bid book — though still possible if stadium capacities are expanded closer to their actual gross capacity. In the section dedicated to their commercial analysis, however, the 1.7 million number for anticipated ticket sales is referenced.
“While the total seating capacity – and therefore sellable inventory – is the smallest of the two bids (due to smaller stadium capacities), this is offset by the strong on-sell rates,” FIFA concludes — though there is still the possibility that the seating capacity could change if the demand is there. Brazil’s got the next three years to try to figure that out.
The major reveal from that technical assessment was in the risk assessments: of the two competing bids, only the European joint bid received a potential red flag from FIFA, and it was crucially over legal concerns.
“A number of legal risks have been identified,” the assessment begins — and parsing the two dense paragraphs where these risks are summarized, it comes down a very simple concept: the three governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany might not have allowed FIFA to have the “anticipated operational control” of the 2027 World Cup and may have “reallocate(d) certain costs to FIFA.”
In short, as of the time of the technical assessment, the three governments had a chance to mitigate these risks to FIFA if they “implement their commitment to cooperate with FIFA to meet the tournament’s requirements.”
It’s that FIFA red flag that guaranteed that Brazil walked out of the technical assessment with a higher overall score of 4.0 to the BNG bid’s 3.7.
But it’s in FIFA’s technical analysis that the main takeaway is once again reinforced: it was Brazil — and South America’s — turn.
“With respect to hosting opportunities, it is worth noting that, if the bid were successful, South America would be hosting the competition for the first time, which could have a tremendous impact on women’s football in the region.”
The bid has proven successful, as expected. Now the work of making sure that impact is as tremendous as promised begins.
(Top photo: MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP via Getty Images)
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Meg Linehan is a senior writer for The Athletic who covers the U.S. women’s national team, the National Women’s Soccer League and more. She also hosts the weekly podcast “Full Time with Meg Linehan.” Follow Meg on Twitter @itsmeglinehan
