The Women’s World Cup and Gender in Sport: Exploring Host Communities’ Perceived Impacts and Future Tourism Development Support

The ever-increasing popularity of the FIFA Women’s World Cup demonstrates that women’s mega sport events attract significant audiences at host nations’ and international level. With most mega sport event research focusing on residents’ evaluations of Olympic Games and FIFA Men’s World Cups, this study investigates FIFA Women’s World Cup’s unexplored potential to contribute to host communities and their support for tourism. Using data from 730 residents of host cities, the PLS-SEM results identify associations between positive tourism, gender-related and negative impacts, and residents’ event attitude, future mega sport event and tourism development support. Perceived event impacts and support were also found to differ across demographic and behavioural factors. Beside identifying a novel gender impact construct, study implications include understanding what perceived community benefits can be used to establish a nexus between women’s mega sport events and tourism opportunities.