When the announcement came out about Australia and New Zealand winning the hosting rights to the FIFA Women’s World Cup it was not treated with a lot of excitement and various agencies were trying to hype it up.
Staging a friendly against France in Melbourne was a brilliant move – that game captured the imagination and once the tournament started the interest grew.
Staging the finals in Sydney though – not such a smart move. The three finals matches played at Stadium Australia attracted the maximum 75,784 fans (Australia v England, England v Colombia and Australia v Denmark), as will the final on Sunday.
If the AFL had not been so pig headed the finals could have been played at the MCG with a capacity of over 95,000. Just imagine!
The Matildas in particular have used social media to engage with, and inspire, fans.
I’ve never been a huge fan of soccer but these matches have captured my attention because of the skill, grace and good natured way they play. Well that is until the Lionesses aggressively targeted Sam Kerr on Wednesday.
However the biggest disappointment was Channel 7’s coverage of the opening match when they completely ignored the opening ceremony which included a welcome to country. In the finals they have certainly covered the opening of each game, so hopefully they have learned.
Then of course there was the public holiday thought bubble. WTF? The impromptu public holiday for the death of The Queen was bad enough for the event industry. I previously reported on an expo that was due to bump in the shell scheme on the Thursday ready for exhibitors to move in on the Friday. Fortunately for the organiser the venue (Sydney Showground) came to the party and allowed them to bump in a day earlier and then shut the venue down for the public holiday. Other event organisers were not so lucky and were forced to pay double time for labour – and the tickets had already been sold to their events.
So I assume our new Business Events association joined forces with the other event industry associations to make representations to the PMs Office to let him know what a dumb idea this was. Maybe?
And in other news
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And this one was a surprise for us in Australia
New Zealand Business Events welcomes end to COVID requirements
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