UEFA events chief says Women’s Euro is outgrowing smaller nations

The growth of the Women’s Euro means next year’s tournament is almost certainly the last time a country as small as Switzerland will be able to host alone, UEFA’s events chief has said.

European football’s governing body has set some ambitious targets for next summer’s finals, including almost doubling revenue to 125 million euros (£103m) compared to the 65m euros earned at the last tournament in England in 2022.

UEFA expects the global television audience this time to be over 500m, compared to 374m for the last Euro.

Ticket sales are at around 209,000 so far – already 20,000 ahead of where they were at the same stage before the last finals – and UEFA Events chief executive Martin Kallen accepted the competition is outgrowing single host nations like Switzerland.

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“If you see where the Women’s Euro is going in the future, it becomes bigger and bigger,” he said at a briefing on Wednesday.

“I think this time it’s possible, (but) it’s already at the edge for Switzerland to be able to do this Euro. I think they went at the right moment to ask for it, because in the future I think the stadiums and the infrastructure in Switzerland is too small.”

UEFA’s head of women’s football Nadine Kessler said she had no concerns about the overlap between this tournament and the men’s Club World Cup in the United States.

That event runs from June 15 to July 13, while the Women’s Euro gets under way on July 2 and finishes on July 27.

“There might be a clash of five to six matches, but overall, I can say I’m not really worried,” Kessler said.

“We are talking about tournaments on two different continents with different time zones. Yes, there might be a clash, but there’s also now a broadcast agreement in place which differs from ours. So again, I’m not worried.”

FIFA announced a global, free-to-air broadcast deal had been agreed with streaming platform DAZN for the Club World Cup.

“As much as we always try to get full exclusivity for our women’s tournaments, in the time we live, with the amount of men’s competitions there are in a year, to get that privilege of full exclusivity is not easy any more,” Kessler added.

“We also must stick to our plan, because I think it’s very important that we also get a professional, respected international calendar in place for women’s football, and that’s why we went ahead with our original tournament dates where it was, and continued our planning as originally desired.

“We have to co-exist, and I’m not too worried that there’s a negative impact because of the Club World Cup taking place in the States.”

Kallen said the host cities were very “focused” and “motivated” to stage the finals, with UEFA targeting sellout crowds for all 31 matches.

He did single out Geneva as one venue with work to do, however.

“They could do more,” he admitted.

“They are not yet where we would like, where they should be. We hope Geneva will do more, because at the moment we have not sold all the tickets for Geneva.

“I hope we see the mayor next week during the draw (in Lausanne on Monday).

“We will have a little word with him that we expect a little bit more from the city of Geneva in terms of promotion.”