Women’s sport is shaping a way of being experienced that goes beyond the purely athletic and sets itself apart from men’s disciplines. What is happening right now in England with the Women’s Rugby World Cup confirms a trend already made clear by the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the recent Women’s Euro in Switzerland, and the 2022 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Sydney: safe competitions, full stadiums, a festive atmosphere, and a relationship between players and fans that is redefining the way sport is lived.

World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin has underlined the importance of what is happening in England. The players are not only working and inspiring on the field, but also off it—when they interact with fans, sign autographs, pose for selfies, dance after matches, or directly engage with the public on social media. “Perceptions about our sport are being challenged, are being changed, and, in many cases, are being blown out of the water. We believe that the men’s game should follow this example. More accessibility and more personality create more stars.”

Winning over new audiences

The figures are telling. 90% of fans who have attended matches at the Rugby World Cup in England—many of them experiencing the sport for the first time—say they would return. Gilpin stressed that this closeness does not reduce competitiveness, but can in fact become a performance booster: “If something is engaging fans, and bringing joy to the players, it can be a performance enabler, not a distraction.”

World Rugby is already preparing a dossier with statistics and stories from this tournament to be shared ahead of the men’s World Cup in 2027 in Australia, aiming to convince teams and federations that direct engagement with fans does not weaken the game, but strengthens it.

For those who don’t understand women’s sport

Not everyone welcomes—or even understands—this boom. Some express their frustration through hostile comments on social media. To address this, the organisers have turned to artificial intelligence to detect and report online abuse, a measure that, according to Yvonne Nolan, the tournament’s competition director, is essential given the unprecedented level of media attention. “We do not accept it, we do not tolerate it, and we will take action wherever possible,” she said. This measure had already been implemented by UEFA during the recent Women’s Euro in Switzerland.

What is happening in England is not an isolated case. In 2023, the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand broke attendance records with almost 2 million spectators and a final in Sydney before 75,784 fans, demonstrating that women’s football is now a truly global phenomenon. A year earlier, in 2022, the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Sydney drew more than 145,000 fans—the highest in the tournament’s history—with matches played in a festive and incident-free atmosphere.