 American referee Kari Seitz was selected in June as a replacement for another official who had been denied a travel visa to the United States.The organizing committee for the 1999 tournament was led by chairwoman Donna de Varona, a former Olympian swimmer and co-founder of the Women's Sports Foundation, and president Marla Messing, an attorney and protégé of U.S. soccer president Alan Rothenberg who had helped organize the 1994 men's World Cup in the United States.Headquartered in Century City, California, it had a $30 million budget for the tournament, a tenth of that for the men's tournament.