Why 'phenomenal' FIFA Women's World Cup impact can still reach ACT without games

The capital's soccer community will be forced to travel to Sydney, or even further, if they want to be a part of the women's World Cup when it arrives in less than 100 days.

Excitement is building and organisers are bracing for sold-out venues around Australia, but Canberra will be absent after the government withdrew from the host-city bid because of the "exorbitant" price of hosting games.

There will be no World Cup presence in Canberra with team camps or satellite events, but Beeche doesn't want the city to miss out.

"Pick some games, get around Australia and even across to New Zealand and be part of this, because if you're a football supporter, or even just a major event-goer, this is going to be the event of 2023 without a doubt," he told The Canberra Times.

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"It's only a three-hour drive to Sydney and a short flight to every other city. You don't want to miss out."

At a countdown event in Sydney on Tuesday, Beeche revealed that 650,000 tickets had been sold across Australia and New Zealand.

Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide will all host matches over the month-long tournament. Only Brisbane and Sydney will host the finals beyond the round of 16, with the final in the harbour city on August 20.

No other World Cup has ever had a capital city excluded, but not only that, Canberra won't even host international team camps, despite the world-class Australian Institute of Sport located in the ACT.

The ACT government didn't want to pay the high match fee to be a World Cup host city and have Canberra Stadium taken out of action during the ACT Brumbies and Canberra Raiders' seasons.

"These types of tournaments always have difficult decisions involved in terms of where matches get allocated," Beeche said. "There's a whole lot that goes into it with infrastructure, and stadiums, and training sites.

"So it's never an easy call landing on a final match allocation, but we're really excited with how the five host cities in Australia are in their readiness. We're confident it's going to really engage the country."

Beeche believes Canberrans will get behind the tournament and its "phenomenal" impact will still reach the capital.

"There's going to be over one and a half million people in the stadiums and an audience of two billion worldwide, and that kind of scale is a great catalyst for growing the women's game," he said.

"There's so much around the periphery of this tournament that's exciting too, like gender equity, and cultural diversity, and that's going to be a great legacy."

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