Beyond the bottom line? Gender, branding and the Australia/New Zealand AsOne 2023 bid strategy for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

Description

The hosting rights for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup (WWC) were awarded in 2020 to a joint bid from Australia and New Zealand. The Trans-Tasman bid, known as AsOne 2023, will be one of several firsts for the tournament: the first to be held in the southern hemisphere; the first to be hosted under an expanded 32-team format; and the first time hosting rights have been shared by two nations. This paper critically interrogates the conjectural politics of the AsOne 2023 bid's digital-media-focused public relations and branding campaign that emphasized themes of women’s empowerment and global collaboration. We do so through a multiperspectival approach which combines aspects from quantitative content analysis with qualitative discourse analysis to explore the AsOne joint bid strategy. Quantitively we use more than six weeks of AsOne 2023-related tweets through the #GetOnside hashtag between June and July 2020, to consider the reach, use and negotiation of a popular social media posts. Qualitatively we critically interrogate media coverage from major news publications from Australia and New Zealand and around the world to further supplement the contextual and discursive elements of our analysis. Despite inconsistencies in the 2023 messaging across diverse constituencies, what is readily apparent is the growing role played by (contextually specific) digital and mobile brand strategies, and wider discourses about gender equality and change in women’s sport, in gaining momentum and support for international sport event hosting bids.

Period	19 Apr 2021
Event title	Women in Sport & Exercise (WiSE) Conference 2021 : Redressing the Balance
Event type	Conference
Location	United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International