Records tumbling in the Women's World Cup 2019

Unless you have been living under a rock, you would've known by now that Team USA has successfully retained their World Champs title, winning Netherlands 2-0 in the finals of the Women's World Cup 2019. This year's edition was a really special and eventful one, with the USNWT (USA National Women's Team) winning a record 12 consecutive games in the World Cup! 

Well, that was actually not the only memorable record broken for this year's World Cup, here are some facts and feats you need to know!

Believe it or not, USNWT went into this tournament with such immense pressure on them. All eyes were on them to trip and some even read their confidence as arrogance when they dished out a 13-0 win over Thailand in their round robin stage. The last time the USNWT failed to win a match in the World Cup was in 2015 when even then, the result was a 0-0 draw with Sweden. You'd have to go all the way back to 2011 for their last loss - which was against Japan in the finals! 

In the end, we all have to agree that they did deliver! The USNWT won the World Cup, challenged societal gender norms and stereotypes and they did it all in style too - scoring a total of 26 goals in this year's edition, a World Cup record for goals in a single tournament! 

The prize money for this year's edition was $30M, a 100% increase from the previous edition's $15M. Not too bad right you think?

That's until you realise that $30M is a tiny percentage (7.5% to be exact) of the $400M received by the teams in the Men's World Cup in 2018. France, the champions of the 2018 Men's World Cup, took home $38M - which is more than all the 24 women's teams competed for in 2019.

Source: Fifa

That really puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?

With their triumph, the USNWT won about $4M and each player on the roster will earn roughly about $250 000 including bonuses. Oh yes, did we already mention that the large discrepancy in salary and prize money between the Men's and Women's teams is also actually the reason why the USNWT are in a lawsuit against their national footballing body, but that's another story.  

For the finals, there was an impressive average of 13.98 million viewers on Fox Sports, the English-language rights holder to the 2019 World Cup matches. Considering that this does not include the streaming viewers, that number dwarfs the 12.51 million who tuned in across all platforms for the 2018 Men's final between France and Croatia!  

Over in Netherlands, the finals saw an audience of an equally impressive 5.48 million on Dutch TV - the highest TV audience in the country since the 2014 Men's World Cup semi-final! 

Nope, Nike wasn't the official tournament sponsor, Adidas was! But, it seems like Nike stole the show this time round. Nike sponsored 14 out of the 24 teams at this year's World Cup, including the USNWT.

Momentarily after USA's triumph, Nike put out commemorative jerseys that was sold out really quickly and an ad that has gathered more than 5 million views on the Nike Women Instagram account and more than 4.5 million views on YouTube. Oh and the US Women's National Team shirt is the bestselling jersey ever sold on Nike.com in a single season, yes men's and women's too.

Erm, so whenever you are in doubt if you should go out to play soccer or nua at home... Just do it!