A new attendance record has been set as 53,058 football fans "packed Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium Saturday" for the FIFA Women’s World Cup opening match, according to Caley Ramsay of GLOBAL NEWS. That is the "largest crowd to ever watch a national team in any sport in Canada." While the excitement "could be felt in the stands Saturday, FIFA fever has been heating up in Edmonton" for the past few weeks. Edmonton Tourism Communications Manager Renee Williams said, "It’s been a really big month." Several family-friendly events were "held across the city and beyond Saturday to get people geared up for the event." And with matches being held in the Capital City until July 5, several more are planned. The int'l event is "projected to bring" in C$48.5M ($39.1M) to Edmonton. Williams: "We know restaurants are busy, we know hotels are full, we know that retail is busy, so we're quite keen to see what that number's going to be" (GLOBAL NEWS, 6/6). In London, Glenn Moore wrote the record crowd beat the 51,936 Canadians "who saw their men play Brazil in the same venue 21 years ago," though to "judge from the empty seats this was tickets sold, not seats filled." The "real gate" looked 5,000 less, though it is "still impressive" (INDEPENDENT, 6/7).
