Barcelona Femeni on Wednesday thrashed their rivals Real Madrid Femenino 5-2 at the Camp Nou to win on an aggregate score of 8-3 in the UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-finals, but Barca’s demolition of Madrid was not the only noteworthy event of the night.

The humiliating defeat of Real Madrid Femenino at Camp Nou was attended by a whopping 91,553 people, making it the largest crowd recorded till date for a women’s football match.

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The previous record for attendance at a women’s football match was set in the 1990s, namely, during the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final match between the United States and China at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, which was attended by 90,185 people.

The attendance figures at the Camp Nou on Wednesday also shattered the previous attendance record for a women’s club football match: in March 2019, 60,739 people attended the match between Barcelona Femeni and Atletico Madrid Femenino at the Wanda Metropolitan Stadium in Madrid.

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However, the record attendance for Wednesday match did not happen in a vacuum: Barcelona went to considerable lengths to give the fixture as much visibility as possible.

The Blaugrana’s 147,000 members were given a 24 hour window to buy free tickets for the match, with Barcelona charging only €2.50 as administration charges. Non-members were subsequently allowed to purchase the remaining tickets, which were priced between €9 and €15.

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Barcelona’s efforts evidently paid dividends: not only was the game attended by a record number of people, but it marked a historic victory for Barcelona Femeni as well.

The 8-3 aggregate win saw the reigning European women’s champions advance to the semi-final stage, where they will face the winner of the Arsenal vs Wolfsburg match on Thursday.