The Women’s Rugby World Cup in England in 2025 is set to be one of the marquee sporting events of the entire year with more than half the tickets for the tournaments already bought up by fans.

England’s Red Roses enter the tournament as the world’s number one side, and will hope to reclaim the trophy they last won back in 2014 in the final at Twickenham on September 27.

Tickets for that clash, which will be a double header also featuring the third-place play-off, are almost all sold, and World Rugby have been blown away by the huge demand for tickets to date.

Eight venues from Sunderland’s Stadium of Light for the opener, to Sandy Park in Exeter, will host games, with the first tickets going on sale in 2024.

Take-up for those has been huge, with managing director of the Women’s Rugby World Cup, Sarah Massey, really excited at the interest shown.

She said: “We have sold more than 220,000 tickets which is half the number that we have got to sell. To sell them this many months out from the event, trends would tell us that it would normally happen much closer to the event. People know this is an unmissable event, they have had to get hold of these tickets early on.

“We’re close to a sell-out for the final. We haven’t been able to release all of the tickets because we have to keep for operational reasons.

“What has been really interesting when we look at the heat map of ticket sales, the ticket sales are from all over the country, every corner of the country. From an overseas perspective, 33 European countries have bought tickets for the final, so a massive spread, that is just across Europe.

“The total international ticket sales are around about 10% so we are seeing interest, not just from within the UK but from much wider afield, which again shows the interest and engagement that we are receiving.”

Three years ago in New Zealand, the Red Roses played in front of a world record crowd at Eden Park in Auckland, losing a thrilling final to the Black Ferns in front of 42,579 people.

That was a world record for a women’s match, which has since been beaten at Twickenham when England took on France in a Six Nations Grand Slam decider in 2023.

The new mark is certain to be topped by the World Cup final, and World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin believes this tournament, which will be broadcast live on the BBC, represents a breakthrough moment for the game as a while.

He said: “This is an event that we are incredibly excited about for the sport of rugby. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to really inspire a new set of fans, new audiences, elevate rugby in the public eye. We are in tournament year, we have building towards that for a long time. This is a tournament that is going to be bold, we are going to be unapologetically impactful in everything we do next year. It’s a showcase of everything rugby can and should be.

“It’s not just a breakthrough moment for the women’s game, it’s a breakthrough moment for rugby, an opportunity to present a different face of rugby, a younger, more inclusive, more vibrant and definitely more family-oriented audience for our sport.”

The end of 2024 saw a change of leadership at World Rugby, with Australian Brett Robinson succeeding Sir Bill Beaumont as president.

But Gilpin insists that change will have no adverse impact on the tournament.

He added: “It’s a change of leadership but in Brett, someone who has been around with us for a considerable period of time. Brett is a huge supporter of the women’s game, he has been in Australia and is on our board internationally.

“He has been on the journey with us in terms of our continued increasing investment in the women’s game more broadly and the Women’s World Cup next year and really taking advantage of this opportunity and the platform it creates. So there are no concerns at all in that regard, in fact the opposite.”