Sunday is the final game. It’s the United States vs. the Netherlands, and the audience will be in the tens of millions. To borrow from the theme song of an iconic American TV sports program: “Are you ready for some football – women’s football?” The answer, across the globe, has been a resounding yes. Finally.
For the rest of the world’s fans, the U.S. women also bestride the plot – though rather more in the way that, say, Darth Vader and the Death Star loom overThese intense feelings about a sport and its protagonists, with emotions running from love to hate and all stops in-between, is what happens when people get engaged enough to care about who wins, and how. On that score, the 2019 World Cup has been a triumph.
And in the United Kingdom, the semi-final between England and Team U.S.A. had a peak audience of 11.7 million. Those ratings have left the men’s cricket World Cup in the dust, despite cricket being a British staple, the tournament being in the U.K. and did we mention that this isAll of which has powered the drive for equal pay, or at the very least better pay, for female players. It’s been one of the signature issues for Team U.S.A, and part of the reason they are lionized at home.
Globe_Sports They are just really really good