AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Eleven years on from hosting one of the most successful men's Rugby World Cups, New Zealand Rugby [NZR] is looking to do it all again as they welcome the top 12 teams from around the world for the first ever women's Rugby World Cup to be held in the Southern Hemisphere.
Forced to delay the tournament by a year due to COVID, NZR is already on track to produce the biggest women's tournament yet with close to a sellout crowd expected for the opening night at Eden Park on Saturday with over 35,000 tickets sold, while the Black Ferns' second match at Waitakere Stadium has already sold out.
Before even the first whistle of the tournament has been blown the World Cup has already broken records with the largest crowd for a women's World Cup match set for Saturday, breaking the previous 20,000 who attended the 2014 World Cup final in France, while it will also break New Zealand's attendance record for women's sport. It almost certainly means a sellout is on the cards for the Final if the Black Ferns are able to advance to the decider.
With NZR targeting 127,000 attendance across the whole tournament, the opening two match days alone have secured over 30% of their target before even the first kick-off, already putting the World Cup on track to be a major success.
Determined to attract all walks of life and turn any naysayers into women's rugby fans, NZR pushed the price point for tickets well below the average and it's clearly already paying dividends. They have also appeared to have borrowed from the playbook of Australia's women's cricket World Cup in 2020, that saw mega pop star Katy Perry perform at the Final, with NZR turning to a pop star of their own in Rita Ora to supercharge the opening night's festivities.
With New Zealand opening up following a bleak two years of lockdowns and COVID isolation -- especially in the Auckland region that faced intense lockdowns for much of 2021 -- NZR has launched the event as a 'family reunion', a welcoming back of rugby loving nations, with branding soaking the city ahead of kick-off.
It comes months after a damning 34-page review into the women's high-performance program brought to light several failings -- including body-shaming and cultural insensitivity -- and produced 26 recommendations, making this six-week tournament even more important for NZR to get right.
Speaking at the tournament opening press conference, NZR RWC 2021 Tournament Director Michelle Hooper said the event was "breaking new ground" while she discussed how important a successful tournament would be to "super charge" women's participation in the game as well as honour the Black Ferns players who've gone before.
"New Zealand Rugby set out to supercharge the women's game by bringing the World Cup here to Aotearoa, New Zealand, and a big part of that was about honouring the legacy of the black jersey globally in terms of the Black Ferns and their win record," Hooper said.
"I think [a successful tournament] for us is changing that value statement around women's sport. Turning the spotlight on women's rugby and celebrating how great our female athletes are globally.
"Success for us is full stadiums as much as possible so that everyone gets a chance to see how incredible these women are and once they see how great the games are in this style of rugby that's being played the rugby sells itself. It's just getting people to see and have an experience with women's rugby.
"In terms of the legacy that it leaves, I've got a six-year-old daughter, she loves playing rugby, she's played for two seasons, all her friends play rugby, our club, there's about 46% player registration that's female. It's about changing at a grassroots level here in New Zealand, and this will inspire generations of children, not just here in New Zealand, but globally and I think rugby plays such a powerful role in inspiring future generations."
Before the World Cup year, NZR had already begun to see a massive growth within the women's game off the back of the successful Black Ferns and Black Ferns Sevens programs with recent figures from 2016-2019 (figures from 2020-21 are considered inconsistent due to COVID impacts on the game) showing a 40% increase in participation of girls and women in community rugby.
With the further increase in funding into the women's game as well as the introduction of fulltime playing contracts at the national level in and the development of the semi-professional Super Rugby Aupiki tournament in 2022, a successful World Cup could see the women's game in New Zealand rise above those around the world.