The Women's World Cup 2025 will be the biggest tournament in women's rugby history, catapulting its athletes into the public eye. The Sporting News investigates what World Rugby is doing to aid their athletes in this huge adjustment.
Trailblazing levels: how women’s rugby is dealing with their new World Cup spotlight? originally appeared on The Sporting News
The Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 is set to be the biggest and best World Cup ever seen in the women’s game - with attendance at the opening game of England vs the USA setting a new record of 42,723 attending at a women’s game.
The fact that the last record was set at the final of the last Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2022 in New Zealand demonstrates just how much, and how quickly, the game is growing at the moment.
But, especially globally, women’s rugby is often underfunded, with multiple teams at the World Cup comprising of primarily amateur or semi-professional players.
Given the new platforms and visibility that athletes will be garnering over the next six weeks, and the sad reality that women’s sport is often subject to online trolls, how is World Rugby approaching this new growth?
How much bigger is this World Cup from the last one?
In a word, exponentially. The Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 sold 375,000 tickets before the start of the competition - which is more than three times the sales of the 2022 tournament.
The final at the Allianz stadium has already sold out, making it set to be the biggest women’s rugby audience ever with 82,000 fans in the stands. The competition also has a huge 24 partners - the broadest of any Rugby World Cup ever, male or female - meaning that its’ impacts and effects will be felt far further that just at the stadiums.
How popular are the World Cup athletes?
Women’s rugby is a rapidly growing, adapting and maturing sport, and the popularity of its athletes reflects this.
On one side of the spectrum, American centre Ilona Maher has become a household name with her social media presence, as the most followed rugby player, male or female, with over nine million followers.
Major national teams - the likes of the English Red Roses, Australian Wallaroos and Kiwi Black Ferns - boast follower counts of 90,000, 55,000 and 313,000 respectively.
However, the other half of the women’s rugby world tells a different story, with under-funded, newer teams not even benefitting from full time contracts.
Samoa covered the media in the run up to the World Cup as its athletes appealed to fans and crowd funded to collect the money to be able to attend the World Cup - testament to the disparity of wealth and visibility within the international system.
This makes the visibility of an English-hosted World Cup even more important, giving underdeveloped teams like Brazil and Samoa a platform to push the development of their domestic sports infrastructure.
What is World Rugby doing to protect its athletes?
Although this growth is incredibly exciting for the game, the increased visibility also comes with its dangers.
Female athletes are 30% more likely to be targets of online hate and abuse - something that was shown to be devastatingly true with the women’s football Euros campaign earlier this summer, as Lioness Jess Carter was subject to online abuse that led to her deleting social media during the tournament.
World Rugby demonstrated their awareness of this and their commitment to stopping these actions in the opening press conference of the tournament, as they announced a designated anti hate and abuse program in place across the tournament.
This program, which is part of their athlete-centred approach to wellbeing during the competition, monitors - and crucially acts on - online abuse and hate toward all athletes and match officials taking part in the World Cup to hopefully erase this threat.
In addition, there is also mental health services and support working closely with the nations’ rugby unions in order to deliver and educate surrounding this newfound spotlight.
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Category: General Sports
