Women's World Cup: Fifa president Gianni Infantino threatens tournament blackout in Europe

Fifa president Gianni Infantino has threatened to not broadcast the Women's World Cup successful 5 European countries unless TV companies amended their rights offers.

He added it was Fifa's "moral and ineligible work not to undersell" the event.

The World Cup, co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, starts connected 20 July.

Infantino said European broadcasters had offered satellite football's governing assemblage $1m-$10m (£800,000-£8m) for the rights, compared with $100m-$200m for the men's World Cup.

"Should the offers proceed not to beryllium fair, we volition beryllium forced not to broadcast the Fifa Women's World Cup into the 'big five' European countries," Infantino said astatine a World Trade Organization gathering successful Geneva.

"I call, therefore, connected each players, fans, shot officials, presidents, premier ministers, politicians and journalists each implicit the satellite to articulation america and enactment this telephone for a just remuneration of women's football. Women merit it, arsenic elemental arsenic that."

Rights offers for erstwhile tournaments were bundled unneurotic with different events including the men's World Cup, but Fifa has present separated the bidding process.

In calling for improved offers, Infantino said each TV gross for the tourney would beryllium reinvested successful women's shot and that nationalist broadcasters successful particular, specified arsenic the BBC, person a "duty to beforehand and put successful women's sport".

The BBC held the sole broadcast rights successful the UK for the 2019 Women's World Cup but shared the rights for the caller men's World Cup successful Qatar with ITV.

Last twelvemonth the Women's World Cup and European Championship were some added to the 'crown jewels' of British sporting events, which necessitate free-to-air coverage.

Infantino added that Fifa had trebled the full prize wealth to $152m compared with the 2019 tourney successful France and reiterated the organisation's tendency to person adjacent wage for the men's and women's World Cups by 2026 and 2027, first announced astatine its yearly legislature successful March.

According to Fifa's data, 1.12 cardinal radical watched the 2019 Women's World Cup successful France - the astir watched women's tourney ever.

Almost fractional of full viewing hours were from Europe, with the mean viewing clip of 4.14 hours per idiosyncratic crossed the full tourney much than treble the mean of the remainder of the world.

That could beryllium partially attributed to the favourable clip portion and that 7 of the 8 quarter-finalists were European, with England reaching the semi-finals earlier losing to eventual winners the United States.

Kick-off times for the 2023 World Cup are little favourable, ranging from 01:00 to 12:00 BST, though England's 3 radical games commencement betwixt 09:30 and 12:00 and the last is scheduled to footwear disconnected astatine 11:00.

"Maybe, due to the fact that it is successful Australia and New Zealand, it's not played connected prime-time successful Europe, but still, it is played astatine 9am oregon 10am, truthful it is rather a tenable time," added Infantino.

Interest successful women's shot continues to rise, with a grounds planetary audience of much than 365 cardinal watching past summer's Euro 2022 successful England, with 50 cardinal tuning successful for England's triumph implicit Germany successful the Wembley final.

Domestically, the Lionesses' triumph was watched by a highest BBC One tv assemblage of 17.4 million, making it the most-watched women's shot crippled connected UK television. There were a further 5.9 cardinal streams of the crippled connected the BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app.

Research from the Women's Sport Trust revealed that the magnitude of clip the mean UK spectator spent watching women's athletics successful 2022 was much than treble the 2021 figure.

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