An Ambivalent Spectacle: Watching Women's World Cup 2015

I have been writing about women’s soccer since 1998 and have attended the two Women’s World Cups held in the United States. In 2011, I was frequently asked if I was going to Women’s World Cup in Germany, and I have had the same questions about Canada in 2015. Neither tournament appealed to me enough to make the trip. Like many fans of football, I find a World Cup spectacle as something that I am ambivalent about. It is great to see the best female players in the world, on a global stage, and the Women’s World Cup is becoming an important mega-event for women’s sport more generally. But I also do not want to financially contribute to the already swollen finances of FIFA.