Number-crunched: the rise and rise of the Women's World Cup
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By Nick Harris 1 June 2015 The 2015 Women's World Cup (WWC) kicks off this coming weekend in Canada, and it will be the seventh edition of a tournament that has come a long way in short time. At the first tournament the games were 80 minutes long, there was a single sponsor, the final wasn't shown on TV in the winning nation's country, and there was no prize money. That was in 1991. Prize money wasn't actually introduced to the WWC until the fifth tournament, in 2007, when the total prize fund was $5.8m, rising to $7.6m in 2011. The prize money in 2011 was equivalent to 2% of the men's 2010 World Cup prize fund of $380m the year before. The women's game is closing the gap but still has some way to go to parity. The 2015 WWC prize fund of $13.6m is 3.3% of last year's 2014 World Cup prize fund of $406m. The WWC is expanding though, to 24 nations this year. The first graphic shows how the event has grown over time, by participants. It's designed to be read either by column (for participants in any given year, read vertically) or by row (if you want to track the progress of any one nation over time). Nations in bold are making their debuts. Winners, runners-up, third-placed and fourth-placed teams are noted. Summaries of all-time appearances by teams from each confederation are on the left; for example there were five European teams in 1991, and that has grown to eight in 2015, and there have been 11 different European teams altogether.
Number-crunched: the rise and rise of the Women's World Cup
Number-crunched: the rise and rise of the…
Number-crunched: the rise and rise of the Women's World Cup
By Nick Harris 1 June 2015 The 2015 Women's World Cup (WWC) kicks off this coming weekend in Canada, and it will be the seventh edition of a tournament that has come a long way in short time. At the first tournament the games were 80 minutes long, there was a single sponsor, the final wasn't shown on TV in the winning nation's country, and there was no prize money. That was in 1991. Prize money wasn't actually introduced to the WWC until the fifth tournament, in 2007, when the total prize fund was $5.8m, rising to $7.6m in 2011. The prize money in 2011 was equivalent to 2% of the men's 2010 World Cup prize fund of $380m the year before. The women's game is closing the gap but still has some way to go to parity. The 2015 WWC prize fund of $13.6m is 3.3% of last year's 2014 World Cup prize fund of $406m. The WWC is expanding though, to 24 nations this year. The first graphic shows how the event has grown over time, by participants. It's designed to be read either by column (for participants in any given year, read vertically) or by row (if you want to track the progress of any one nation over time). Nations in bold are making their debuts. Winners, runners-up, third-placed and fourth-placed teams are noted. Summaries of all-time appearances by teams from each confederation are on the left; for example there were five European teams in 1991, and that has grown to eight in 2015, and there have been 11 different European teams altogether.