Gender, branding, and the Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand As One 2023 social media strategy: winning the Women's World Cup

In this chapter we critically explore the social media strategy of the successful Australia–New Zealand “As One 2023” joint bid for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Women's World Cup 2023. We explore how the As One 2023 bid harnessed Twitter to communicate a hosting vision that appealed to multiple audiences while strategically, and successfully, resonating with contemporary FIFA politics. We conducted a quantitative and qualitative content analysis to explore the constructed presence and narrative patterns from the As One 2023 bid's Twitter activity. Our findings suggest content relied on two primary “legacy” narratives which both conformed to current FIFA strategy and broader social and regional politics: (1) growing football participation among women and girls and (2) strengthening cultural, economic, and political relations in the Asia-Pacific. Ultimately, we argue the use of Twitter was strategic and targeted, deliberately appropriating popular FIFA narratives to build an emotive “legacy” vision to gain support from voting members of the FIFA Council.