The U.S. and Mexico submitted a joint bid to host the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup

The GIST: On Friday, the U.S. and Mexico formally submitted a joint bid to host the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup (WWC). If successful, the North American neighbors plan on harnessing the surging popularity of women’s soccer to generate $3B in revenue and 4.5M in attendance. That’s goal-setting.

The rationale: If met, these projections represent five times the 2023 WWC $570M revenue and more than double the 2023 tournament’s 1.98M attendance.

• In addition to record viewership and revenue, recent data illustrates how the latest WWC is improving Australia’s attitude toward equality in women’s sports, especially soccer.

• It’s partly why the government invested $330M in the women’s game as they pursue a “Golden Decade” of tournament bids. All these tourneys could resolve the country’s structural issues with funding and participation to build a better elite sports pipeline.

The North American sports trend: If awarded, the 2027 tourney would follow the men’s 2026 World Cup (WC) hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, a 48-team competition with its own $11B revenue target. This provides the perfect opportunity for the WWC to leverage existing infrastructure to cut costs and optimize ROI.

• If the U.S. wins the WWC bid in May, it will make history with a four-year global soccer hosting streak by welcoming the 2025 Club WC, the 2026 WC, the 2027 WWC, and the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA.

• Notably, Canada was not asked to join the 2027 WWC bid, but there’s no shade felt by the 2015 host, which held WWC attendance records for 8 years.

Zooming out: For the first time, a WWC host could springboard off of built-in WC resources. That said, the NWSL and USWNT have more than built their case to host the WWC: the USWNT generated more revenue than the USMNT from 2016–2018, and the NWSL has a better value-to-revenue multiple than MLB.

• Add that to a record NWSL media deal and an increase in long-form women’s soccer features, and there’s no reason the proposed WWC wouldn’t meet their goals.