GENEVA (AP) — The European Championship in women’s soccer has global ambitions.
The 16-team tournament that opens Wednesday in Switzerland features 31 games in total and will be broadcast in the United States by Fox and across Latin America by Disney+.
It will draw a tournament record attendance of more than 600,000 fans in the eight stadiums with ticket buyers from more than 120 countries, according to European soccer body UEFA.
“We knew we needed to activate a bigger global fan base that travels (and) follows their team,” said Nadine Kessler, the managing director of women’s soccer at UEFA.
She said 35% of the tickets sold so far went to traveling fans including 5,000 to residents of the United States. The biggest international buyer is Switzerland’s neighbor Germany with 61,000 tickets.
“That is unheard of in women’s football,” Kessler told reporters at a pre-tournament briefing.
World champion Spain is the expected favorite — even with a question mark on the status of star Aitana Bonmati — and starts Thursday against Portugal in Bern.
Record revenue
The third Women’s Euros in the 16-team format has drawn record income from broadcasters and sponsors, which include global brands Adidas, Amazon, PlayStation and Visa.
Overall tournament revenue close to 130 million euros ($152 million) will be more than double the Euro 2022 edition in England.
Prize money also has more than doubled — to 41 million euros ($48 million) from 16 million euros ($18.75 million). The champion can get more than 5 million euros ($5.9 million) if its run includes winning all three group-stage games.
The revenue share to clubs releasing players selected for the tournament also doubled, to 9 million euros ($10.5 million), lifted by a bonus subsidy of 3 million euros ($3.5 million) from a similar program for men’s national-team competitions in Europe.
UEFA will make a loss on the tournament of up to 25 million euros ($29.3 million) though is happy to do so.
“We invest more despite not making money with the Euro because it’s just the right thing to do,” said Kessler, a former FIFA World Player of the Year who won the Euro 2013 title with Germany.
Title contenders
Germany’s title with Kessler 12 years ago was its sixth straight but a seventh has been elusive. The Germans are an expected contender after several high-scoring victories in 2025 and taking a bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where they lost twice to the United States.
Spain is the current World Cup and Nations League title holder though has never reached a Euros final and lost that bronze medal game in Paris to Germany.
Spain’s plans have been disrupted by star player Aitana Bonmatí being hospitalized over the weekend with viral meningitis.
England-Netherlands rivalry
The host nation won in each of the past two Euros editions, and now defending champion England and 2017 champion the Netherlands are in the same group; they’ll meet on July 9 in Zurich. It’s a tough group that includes France.
Both title wins were coached by Sarina Wiegman, who will lead England against her native country with an extra layer of intrigue. After the tournament, Wiegman’s assistant Arjan Veurink will go home to coach the Dutch toward qualifying for the 2027 World Cup in Brazil.
Swiss outsiders
A host nation hat trick looks unlikely, even with coaching great Pia Sundhage hired for the Switzerland job and a kind group draw with Norway, Iceland and Finland.
The Swedish veteran, and two-time Olympic champion with the United States, has called finding a winning blend in her squad of veterans and teenagers — like Barcelona prospect Sydney Schertenleib — the biggest challenge of her career.
Losing a training game 7-1 to the Under-15 boys’ team of top-tier men’s club Lucerne fueled negative headlines though Sundhage insisted: “The result doesn’t matter.”
“This is a good way to prepare,” Sundhage insisted, and seemed to be proven right days later when a final warmup friendly against the Czech Republic was won convincingly 4-1.
Switzerland opens its tournament Wednesday evening against Norway at a sold-out St. Jakob Park in Basel.
Host society
Switzerland, which co-hosted the men’s Euro 2008 with Austria, wants the women’s version to drive progress on gender equality in soccer and society.
A wider goal around the tournament is doubling the number of female players, referees, coaches and club directors, said national soccer federation president Dominique Blanc, one of 52 male leaders of the 55 national members of UEFA.
“We have come a long way in a really short time,” said former national-team great Lara Dickenmann, who was 29 when Switzerland first played at a major tournament in the 2015 World Cup.
The Ohio State University graduate said showcasing so many teenagers in this squad at home “is massive. A lot of younger kids are going to identify with these players.”
All eight tournament venues are home stadiums of top-division men’s teams, including all four Euro 2008 venues: in Basel, Bern, Geneva and Zurich.
Fans with tickets will have free public transport on match days using a national train service which should be more reliable than Germany’s proved to be at the men’s Euro 2024.
Club World Cup clashes
Euro 2025 games are on the main national free-to-air networks in Europe, unlike the live-streamed FIFA Club World Cup, which runs until July 13 in the United States.
Broadcast overlaps mostly involve France, whose game against England on Saturday clashes with the first half of a Club World Cup quarterfinal in New Jersey likely featuring Real Madrid. France-Wales on July 9 goes against a semifinal at the FIFA event.
The Club World Cup final goes directly up against the simultaneous kickoffs of France-Netherlands and England-Wales that complete Group D.
___
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
