Skip to main content
UKTI blog

https://ukti.blog.gov.uk/2011/07/13/football-meets-business-at-the-womens-world-cup/

Football meets business at the Women’s World Cup

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Sports & Leisure

Every so often you realise in life that you are perhaps taking your job a little too seriously. It happened to me on Saturday evening in the Bay Arena in Leverkusen just before half-time. I was there watching our ladies taking on the mighty France in the quarter-finals of the Women's football World Cup when I realised that I wasn't actually 'watching' properly.

Instead I was seeing the match not as an impressive display of footballing talent but, rather worryingly, as a series of numeric opportunities with which I could reference the strength of the UK economy.

Since the start of the tournament, we have been producing a 'Women's World Cup UKTI statoftheday' on the UKTI_Germany twitterfeed,  linking the football with UK business. Examples have included 'Ellen White scorer of opener against Japan, is 22. The UK Aerospace industry makes £22bn a year' and 'Exports to NewZealand, England's opponents in Dresden, rose by 29% in first quarter of 2011.'

This has been a great opportunity to hit two flies with one clap (as the Germans would say); promoting both the UK economy and the progress of our national team all within 140 characters.
We vowed to produce one of these stats for every day the team remained in the competition - and thanks to the comeback win over NZ and an imperious victory over Japan - their stay was extended as was our run of stats.

This left me over the weekend in the curious position of sitting in a football stadium with 26,000 other spectators, thinking about future #statofthedays and not just about silky skills.

What a great tackle by Casey Stoney, our number 6, I thought, if she gets player of the match I might mention that we are the 6th largest manufacturer in the world.

And then  there was the fantastic 59th minute strike by Jill Scott, helpfully wearing the number 4 shirt - which just happens to be how many of the world's top ten universities are in the UK.
But in the end the French (to whom UK firms export c£24bn worth of goods and services a year, if you wanted to know) were just too strong for our brave ladies.

So the only stat that matters is that they scored one more penalty than us.

And, now that we are out, my life can return to normal and I can once again separate my watching of sport from my promotion of the UK economy.

Sharing and comments

Share this page