The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup is the seventh FIFA Women's World Cup,
the quadrennial international women's football world championship
tournament. In March 2011, Canada won the right to host the event, the
first time the country will host the tournament and the third time it
has been in North America. The tournament began on 6 June 2015 and will
finish on 5 July.
The 2015 tournament saw the World Cup expanded
to 24 teams from 16 in 2011. Canada received direct entry as host, and a
qualification tournament of 134 teams was held for the remaining 23
places. With the expanded tournament, eight teams made their Women's
World Cup debut at the 2015 tournament. All previous Women's World Cup
finalists qualified for the tournament, with established nations
Germany, Japan, and the USA all among the pre-tournament favourites.
The tournament is using goal-line technology for the first time
with the Hawk-Eye system, and will also be the first Women's World Cup
to be played on artificial turf. Players expressed concerns over
potential injuries from the artificial turf, but a legal case asking for
matches to be moved was dropped in January 2015.
The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup is one of the first FIFA tournaments
under new rights deals in two North American markets. In its host
country of Canada, the competition are televised by CTV, TSN and RDS
(French) through a new rights agreement with parent company Bell Media.
In
the United States, English-language television and radio rights are
held by Fox Sports, NBC-owned Telemundo and NBC Universo handle
Spanish-language television broadcasts, and Spanish-language radio
rights were given to the Futbol de Primera radio network (although that
network is not broadcasting this tournament due to conflicts with the
2015 Copa América).
On 8 December 2014 FIFA signed a contract with the European Broadcasting Union for 37 countries.
In
the United Kingdom all matches from the tournament are being shown by
the BBC across BBC Two, BBC Three and the BBC Red Button, with selected
matches including all England games live on BBC Radio.
In
Australia, SBS aired all 52 matches live online, and televised 41
matches live, with the only matches not televised live being those which
aired concurrently.
