An average audience of almost two million viewers turned in to Australian broadcaster Seven Network’s coverage of the opener at the Stadium Australia in Sydney on Thursday (July 20).

Australia, who were without star striker Sam Kerr due to injury, beat the Republic of Ireland 1-0 thanks to Steph Catley’s second-half penalty.

Seven is reporting that the match drew an average viewership of 1.97 million, including 196,000 watching on its online video platform 7plus.

According to Seven, the audience reached as high as 2.28 million at one stage during the clash played in front of crowd of 75,784 fans at Stadium Australia, a record attendance for a women’s football match in the country.

The pre-and-post-match coverage of the World Cup match also reportedly generated viewing figures of 664,000 and 695,000 respectively.

This surpasses the number that watched the second day of the fourth test of the Ashes series between Australia and England played in Manchester, with the opening session said to have attracted 546,000 viewers on Nine.

Lewis Martin, head of network sport and managing director of Seven Melbourne, said he expected the World Cup to be the "biggest global sporting event of the year" the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

FIFA has also announced the completion of several broadcast deals for the tournament being staged across Australia and New Zealand.

Among those include NHK in Japan and CCTV in China, as well as Saran in Central Asia, ELTA in Chinese Taipei, PCCW in Hong Kong, Medianet in the Maldives, Content Distribution LLC in Mongolia and Cignal TV in the Phillipines.

FIFA revealed that the new agreements mean that the World Cup will be broad in 200 territories across the world.

"We are delighted with the final sales result, which will ensure the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 is one of the greatest sporting events ever and will be viewed in every corner of the world," said Romy Gai, chief business officer for FIFA.

"We saw from the tournament in France in 2019 that women's football presented a huge opportunity, which is why we took the decision to sell the rights for 2023 on a standalone basis.

"That decision has now been fully justified.

"We are especially happy that the tournament is widely available on free-to-air which gives us the chance to attract new audiences for women's football.

"The revenues from the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 will be entirely reinvested in women's football, helping it to develop still further in the future."

Last week it was reported that FIFA had fallen around $100 million (£76 million/€89 million) short of its goal of $300 million (£229 million/€267 million) for broadcast right fees for the quadrennial tournament.

This year’s Women’s World Cup is the first in which FIFA separately sold broadcast rights to the tournament, a break from the past in which the rights were essentially given for free to broadcasters who bought rights to the men’s tournament.

In May, FIFA President Gianni Infantino branded rights offers from the five leading European nations to broadcast the event as "a slap in the face for women worldwide" and warned that they could face a television blackout unless offers were improved.