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Introducing a 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 Round One of this year’s Liberty A-League ⚽️🇦🇺
— Liberty A-League (@aleaguewomen) August 17, 2023
We’ll be hosting a standalone celebration of women’s football, aiming to break domestic attendance records off the back of the history making FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The Liberty A-League will… pic.twitter.com/wi9ac0brNR
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I know 10 play this out for free on 10play, but I cannot see why some of the day time games not air on one of the linear channels.
It’s only that shitty advertorial and branded style content on the main channel on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
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Ten could do significant damage to any WWC legacy if they’re not careful.
It’s going to be hard to carry the momentum at the best of times (junior football has basically finished for the year and there are few WWC players in the ALW to act as a draw card), but if they treat the game like they have over the past few seasons people won’t bother
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Uzbekistan has officially expressed an interest, as have the Saudis, who are positioning themselves as a key player in world football.
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How can you give it to Saudi Arabia when their womens program only started last year?
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$$$ Money talks.
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There has been a suggestion that if Australia did bid, it may only be an eastern seaboard based bid (it’s been mooted that it may be NSW only too)
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Shit will hit the fan if it’s a centrally NSW event…
2015 Men’s event (hosted in Australia) was an east coast tournament in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Newcastle with 16 teams in 32 games.
2022 Women’s event (India) was held in 3 cities with 12 teams in 26 games. I’d imagine 2026 would be the same.
Could do Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne. (AAMI, Suncorp, Allianz)
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After the Commonwealth Games, it’s hard to see how the Victorian government could justify spending money on sports rights. Queensland might not be interested with spending on the Olympics.
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I wonder though, if the Victorian Government now wishes it had built a bigger rectangular stadium… I suspect the smallish capacity of the current one at 30,000 had cost it more marquee Matildas matches, which went to Brisbane. Could also cost it other events in the future too.
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Well OF COURSE it’s not going to be packed to the rafters EVERY TIME…
But for a city of 5 million, only having 30,000 seats for “the world game” (plus league and union) … I think it should have been bigger. 50,000 would put it on par with the Brisbane one.
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30k is a good size. Bigger events have Marvel (50k) then the MCG for the mega events (100k)
A good stadium system
Contribution to host a small number of 2026 Women’s Asian Cup matches could cost millions of dollars, a small feed compared with $6.7 billion cost to host Commonwealth Games.
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6.7 billion dollar figure that is incorrect.
The cost is being disputed. Incorrect is inaccurate.
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There’s what? Three rectangular stadia larger in Australia?
A larger facility is probably overkill given the amount of use it would get, especially given there are other options in town (albeit with some limitations for rectangular-based sports). It’s really only FIFA events that would limit the use of AAMI Park and take events away from Melbourne
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The Saudis are willing to spend ridiculous sums of money on effectively sportswashing - see LIV golf and the F1.
It’s been suggested that the NSW Government (via Destination NSW) may be willing to stump up a decent amount of cash to get it.
One of the things that was highlighted in the WWC bid assessment was poor transport links between host cities where plane travel was the only option - centralising the event around Sydney would help ameliorate this and reduce the cost to run the event.
Its also not traditionally a particularly big tournament in terms of attracting attendees either - it wouldn’t necessarily need access to the larger stadia in the country until finals (if at all).
All that said, I think FA needs to decide what to focus on - hosting a future edition of the Asian Cup (both Mens and Womens) are probably slam dunks given we’ve pretty well shown that we’re capable but probably has a benefit cap, whereas hosting a World Cup (or more likely co-hosting) would be considerably more attractive but require greater investment (and cooperation with Government and other sports). There will also be a lot of people who will want FA to focus on growing the domestic game as an alternative though.
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As VictorianSun posted, Australia held the 2015 Men’s Asian Cup. I think it will be another 16-20 years from now before the tournament returns Down Under.
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