The group stage of soccer’s UEFA Women's European Championship has secured record-breaking attendances, with 22 of the 24 national teams' tournament games sold out.
European governing body UEFA announced the 16-team event being held in Switzerland had already seen 461,582 fans attend group stage matches, with several games also breaking records during the tournament’s early stages.
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Records had already been set ahead of the first match, with the tournament selling more than 600,000 tickets to surpass the 574,875 sold during the previous 2022 edition hosted by England.
This year’s edition has seen the record for highest attendance at a group stage match not involving the host nation(s) broken twice, with 29,520 spectators watching Spain beat Portugal 5-0 in Bern, before 341,165 fans attended Germany’s 2-1 victory over Denmark in Basel.
The match between Germany and Denmark also set the record for the most fans at a women’s soccer match in Switzerland, which drew 34,165 spectators.
The crowd of 34,063 at Switzerland’s game against Norway, meanwhile, was a record for the most fans at a Swiss women’s national team match.
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By GlobalDataThe average attendance in the group stage was 19,233 spectators per match.
Nadine Kessler, UEFA’s head of women’s football, said: "If it was not clear before, it is undeniable now – women's football is unstoppable and here to stay.
“This is more than a tournament; it's a movement, and the response from across Europe and beyond proves that women's football is not only here to stay – it is setting the new standard.”
The governing body also said the tournament has so far been successful across digital platforms, with 8.4 million engagements across the tournament’s social media platforms during the group stage – a 55% increase over the same period in 2022.
Meanwhile, the tournament has also delivered the most goals in the group stage of a women’s Euro with 89 scored so far, which broke the 2022 edition’s record of 78.
Spain and England both scored 14 goals each across their group stage matches, matching England’s record in 2022.
The tournament is also on track to break the record of goals scored across a women’s Euro, which stands at 95 from the previous edition.
The news comes weeks after global secondary ticketing marketplace Viagogo announced that demand for the women’s Euros hit record levels.
The ticketing platform revealed that it had seen a 112% increase in secondary ticket purchases for the tournament compared to the 2022 edition of the showpiece.
Interest as a whole, it said, had grown, with internet searches for tickets having quadrupled when compared to the 2022 tournament, while ticket purchases have occurred in 38 different markets.
The company's international business lead Matt Drew told Sportcal that of those sales, only 15% have been for the showpiece final, making the spread of purchases much more even than the 2022 event, where a “disproportionate” amount of tickets were focused on the final.
The tournament now moves into its latter stage, with a quarterfinal between Norway and Italy tomorrow (July 16).
