Australia & New Zealand Win Vote To Host 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup

The ninth FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023 will be played in Australia and New Zealand following a vote by the 35 members of the FIFA Council today. Australia and New Zealand won after the first ballot with 22 votes against the 13 backing Colombia.

A fifteen month process which initially saw a record nine submissions of interest in hosting the first 32-team tournament was whittled down with Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea and this week Japan dropping out of the running and two separate bids from Australia and New Zealand merging “As One”.

In the FIFA Technical Report released two weeks ago, the “As One” bid scored 4.1 out of 5 overall far ahead of the 2.8 scored by Colombia. The cost of the joint Australia and New Zealand bid was estimated to be $107.7m with $75.7m covered by confirmed government contributions.

There was a growing feeling that despite the technical superiority of the Australia and New Zealand bid, a coalition between the European (UEFA) and South American (CONMEBOL) members of the FIFA Council might lead to Colombia gaining enough votes to win. Yet despite clear block voting, with the nine UEFA members joining the four CONMEBOL members in backing Colombia, the rest of the 22 votes, split between the North America (CONCACAF), Africa (CAF), Asia (AFC) and Oceania (OFC) confederations unanimously voted for the As One bid.

Auckland’s Eden Park, the venue for the 2015 Rugby World Cup final will stage the Opening Match in July 2019, one of five stadiums to be used in New Zealand. Eight venues have been proposed by Australia with the 70,000-capacity Stadium Australia set to stage the World Cup final, the largest venue to stage the showpiece of the women’s game this century.