Rugby has an attendance problem. We have plenty of critics, excuses, peeves, whines, and nostalgia. We need bums in seats, full price tickets bought and sold, a full roar of a crowd glued to the action, stop and start, kick or run, win or lose, or none of this will matter or last long.
The average attendance for about 20 Formula One events a year is nearly 300,000. The NFL pulls almost 70,000 on average over 272 games. The Bundesliga, Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A average between 30,000 and 40,000 per football match, with a long season and over 300 games per league.
The AFL has a similar range with fewer games. The IPL clears 40,000 over 70-plus cricket matches. Baseball in Japan, Canada, and the USA are in the 30,000 average zone in 858 to 2,430 games a year. Hell, even Major League Soccer in the US and Canada average 23,234 fans live in almost 500 games a year, a bit ahead of Liga MX (22,045 attendees on average) where the average disposable income lags their North American neighbours considerably. T
he NRL seats almost 20,000 fans per game over 200-plus tilts. The NBA has over 1,000 games in a season and has over 18,000 tickets sold on average. Even ice hockey (17,433 for the NHL) has a higher average than the best figure rugby union can muster (the European Champions Cup, at 16,487).
Put in an aggregate frame, here is the tale of the tape:
1. MLB (over 70 million a season)
2. NHL (over 20 million)
3. NBA (over 20 million)
4. NFL (almost 19 million)
5. EPL (almost 15 million)
6. MLS (over 11 million)
7. AFL (over 8 million)
8. F1 (almost 6 million)
9. NRL (over 4 million)
10. IPL (over 3 million)
The highest total league attendance for a rugby competition is just outside that list: the Top 14 in France, which draws just short of 3 million fans a year, putting it ahead of the CFL (Canadian football), German handball, lacrosse, the GAA, volleyball in Italy, and indoor soccer in the USA.
The excuses and initiatives by rugby to render itself more beautiful, watchable, and profitable fall apart when we look honestly at this: the spectator experience of a Formula One event has more to do with the action in the stands and the bars than eyes on cars, soccer is in its highest ever scoring patch is ecstatic with a rate of 3.2 or even 2.85 total goals a game (the Six Nations is averaging between 5 and 6 tries per match), cricket has more dead time even than glacial baseball, ice hockey has an incredibly difficult puck to follow, American football has the least ball-in-play time of any contact ball sport, and Mexico has about a fifth the disposable income of Australia per capita.
Repeat after me: rugby stadia will not fill up by making tries easier to score, scrums scarce and not pinged much, box kicks passe, and rendering Test rugby less friendly and more tied to trophies.
Australia players after the Autumn International match at Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh. Picture date: Sunday November 24, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
The most correlative, perhaps causative, factors are about a town falling in love, the depth of investment, and the perception, the passionate belief, that the best of the best come to play year after year, even if the hometown team is not the best. Rugby’s World Cup is a marketer’s dream: brands can spotlight their identity in a giant global carnival with an open and stacked audience: in 2023 Mastercard, Emirates, Asahi and Meta jumped in, mindful of 2019 in Japan: a $5 billion footprint according to EY.
Not inconsequentially, a World Cup sells out 99% of its 40-plus games, and those 600,000 visitors (about 40% women, by the way) in the stands are shooting dozens of photos and videos to South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Ireland, Italy, Canada, the U.S., and increasingly, much of Asia.
The most impressive consecutive sellout sequence in professional sport is the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field which began when Dwight Eisenhower was president. NFL teams in Denver, New York, and Pittsburgh have long sold out their stadia too, but Green Bay is a small city.
Two hundred and seventy-one American cities are more populated than Green Bay, the quintessential Rust Belt town which has seen better days. If Green Bay were applying for an NFL franchise now for the first time it would fail to qualify. To put the town in an Australian context, Green Bay is four to five times smaller than Canberra and on average has lower disposable income.
But go to Green Bay even in the summer, as my son and I did as a detour from a golf trip to Whistling Straits and try to have a conversation with a local that does not include the Packers. The design of the town, the bars, parking, vantage points, and the communal calendar revolves around those handful of (or as many as ten, if the Cheeseheads go deep into the playoffs) games.
The University of Nebraska has sold out over 400 college football games in a row and when their stadium is full, Memorial Stadium itself is the most populated spot in this modest, farming state. The home team has had horrific luck and results of late. The crowd still comes and hopes. Money and numbers are not the be all and end all in filling a stadium, which we can see in rugby.
La Rochelle has sold out Stade Marcel Deflandre (capacity 16,689) over a hundred times in a row, a stretch began the start of 2016. The only cups which visited their cabinet during that run are from 2022 and 2023 (the biggest trophy to be fair), the club have been runner up in the Top 14 twice (2021 and 2023) and the Challenge Cup in 2019. La Rochelle has only about 80,000 inhabitants.
The Top 14 in general has grown year on year in attendance, as has its immediately junior league (the ProD2). The highest attendance average belongs to Bordeaux (hovering near 28,000 a game which is pretty much a sellout after their remodel to close part of the stands) followed by powerhouse Toulouse (which sells out their 19,500 capacity), rising rugby city Lyon (still mostly a football town, but with a quality stadium which they sell 70% of on average) and old Toulon (both averaging around 17,000 a match, but for Toulon, that is 98% full), and Clermont, which is at La Rochelle’s level, but with 13% seats empty. Bayonne is filling their stadium as consistently as La Rochelle, but it is only a 14,370-seater. The bottom of the league (places like Castres, which is only a 40,000-person town) pull 10,000. The Top 14 has right-sized stadia for their competition.
The United Rugby Championship (URC), by taking in four South African teams and with the rise in Irish fortunes, has gone from around 10,000 fans per game on average to about 12,000 with no end in sight to the growth.
Indeed, South African derbies (over 50,000 at a game) and Irish interpros (over 80,000 at Croke Park for Leinster and Munster) have been selling out regularly. The gap in attendance between Leinster (over 25,000 a game) and Connacht (around 5,000) mirrors their edge in performance and national contracts, but a team like Ulster draws better at home than their log position.
The modern new stadium in Cape Town, imposing old Loftus in Pretoria, and vibe-conscious Kings Park in Durban (with a pool and a beer garden inside the stands) pull Top 14-type crowds but within far more cavernous grounds.
The Welsh, Italian and Scottish team have ‘crowds’ of less than 10,000, many even less than 5,000, which is less than the attendance at big South African high school derbies in the Western Cape; and significantly, not as strong as the average for League One games in Japan (about 10,000).
Every week in a Japanese rugby town, the fan has been guaranteed to see some of the best players in the last decade: Pieter-Steph du Toit, Aaron Smith, Ardie Savea, Malcolm Marx, Damian de Allende, Richie Mo’unga, coached by Robbie Deans, Steve Hansen and other luminaries.
But above all, team identity and loyalty from years of drama, the grand escape, sport intellect, and a bond with the players, the story of the team and seasoned rivalries: this is the stuff of sold tickets.
Self-esteem drawn from the fortunes of a team, the aesthetics of the experience, the glory of group affiliation, a sense of rabid community, the feeling of belonging and mattering and winning. These games we play spring from banned blood contests in Cornwall and Shrovetide and St Ives and Derbyshire, where large mobs of villagers competed for hours on fields with goals three miles apart, fording rivers and being public nuisances, with rules fluid, and goals were ‘gaols’ defended by the most violent players and the ball was hard as stone.
Edinburgh is said to have formed the first football club (in 1833) followed by Cambridge (1848). Rules codified, vulcanised balls and more reliable rubber bladders allowing heading; the idea of playing for money became an idea.
The gulf between public school boys at play in the fields of the Lords and the working-class northerners of England sharpened in 1888 when a football league was formed and immediately won over the towns of the Midlands and the North to the Borders. Life in Liverpool and Manchester: how would it even look without the story of their clubs, strife, the stories, the pain?
Comparatively, rugby is late to the marketplace. Although William Webb Ellis picked up the football in 1823 the sport split over “broken time” (compensation for lost income by workers for weekend injury) in 1895 leading to a 22-club Rugby League in 1922, whilst ‘pure’ Union stayed amateur, then amateurish, then shamateur, and finally in 1995 admitted it was fine to pay to play.
With only three decades under our professional belts, it is not surprising many parts of our code are still mired in amateur practices (ex-players, brothers-in-law, boosters being CEO) and attitudes (fans thinking a player moving to take better pay is disloyal) and skill levels (shoddy marketing). Silent investments, consortia consorting, commercial funds; none of it has seemed to be smooth.
The exceptions (Toulon, Leicester, Lyon, Leinster, Bordeaux) receive regular revenue injections from investors inside and outside their tents, with clever brand partnerships and rabid fanbases.
Whilst it is not one-for-one, the richest clubs (but not the richest countries) will end up having far more potential for success, because one can pay the best coaches and players the highest, and improve facilities, analytics, and planning. Without exception, the exceptional clubs sell tickets.
Super Rugby Pacific is often portrayed as being in the doldrums, and it is true losing South African, Argentinean and Japanese teams was not ideal, particularly since South African revenue is large.
But the 2024 season did see increased fan support, viewership, social media engagement, and in person attendance (about 9% in New Zealand, with the rise of the Blues and continued strength of the Hurricanes a factor). In Australia, many of the key ingredients for sold out stadia are present:
1. Top players
2. Good stadia
3. Great weather
4. Sport culture
5. A rich history
6. Innate rivalries
7. Clear identities
8. Remembered wins
The missing elements? The issue is not so much what is lacking. Rugby in Australia is limited by factors more difficult to change than a coach or a plan: geography and the resulting relationships.
Rugby union in Australia is inextricably bound – in talent identification, metrics, broadcast benchmarks, culture — to a more successful New Zealand (at club and Test level) and to more successful domestic competitors (AFL and NRL).
Australia believes winning is the key but is locked in a losing embrace.
A forever underdog identity can work in a pro sports context: the lovable losers at the Chicago Cubs who went 108 years without a title still packed dilapidated and low-tech Wrigley Field in a sort of masochistic cult vibe, until oddly enough, winning it seemed to break the spell and has now fallen into a slump on and off the field.
In 2024, the Brumbies, Rebels, and Reds all made the quarterfinals, but the only home game was in Canberra’s GIO Stadium, where fewer than 9,000 fans attended a win over the Highlanders. The grand final between the Blues and the Chiefs was a blowout with over 44,000 fans there.
(Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
Over the short season, nowadays, the Reds draw about 15,000 a game, the Waratahs about 13,000, the Brumbies about 8,000, and the Force less than 7,000. Four 2024 Super Rugby Pacific games in Australia had fewer than 6,000 fans in attendance (three involving the Force; one a Rebels-Brumbies derby).
This is up from 2022 to 2023 but compared to 2006 (an average of 24,000 across all Australian teams) or the 20,000 average from 2007 to 2012 (before a consistent slide to the 10,000 of now).
Australia has about 27 million people now. In 2006 it was 20 million. Metro Sydney went from 4 to 5 million, Brisbane from 1.8 million to 2.6 million, and Perth 1.5 million to 2.2 million.
In mean wealth and disposable income, Australians are in the top group of nations, along with Switzerland, the U.S., most of Scandinavia, and Canada. If millionaires are a key demographic for season tickets and investors, Australia is also a top ten place (number eight according to most records) with far lower populace than the U.S., China, Japan, the U.K., Germany and France.
The gap may be passion.
Aussie fans routinely monitor how all the Australian teams do and want them to do well. This is hardly the level of rivalry experienced between Everton and Liverpool, the Bulls and Western Province, Munster and Leinster, Toulouse and Toulon, the Eagles and the Cowboys in the NFL, the Blues and Maroons in the feral State of Origin, Boston and the Lakers, or how the entire New Zealand rugby firmament feels towards the Crusaders.
Peak animosity in Aussie rugby union seems reserved for boardroom battles, internecine litigation, and grassroots intracity derbies. The AFL pours petrol on the fires of rivalries, blockbusters between the Big Three. The Intercol between Prince Alfred and Saint Peter’s is not content with one sport.
Mexico names its baseball rivalry games for various civil wars. Basketball in Argentina has names for each ‘classico.’ When Oklahoma plays Oklahoma State, it is called “Bedlam” and everyone in the state must pick a side. Croatian derbies verge on life and death. Sweden sites derbies on specific holiday weekends.
Does it matter enough? Are the contrasting identities clearly defined; the sledging sharp enough?
Marketing can amplify rivalry. Intensifying banter like Australia just relished in cricket is what the East Coast Derby needs.
The Wallaby exclusion of most overseas players from selection has not slowed down the exodus, with a couple dozen starring for French, Irish, Scottish, English and Japanese clubs, or even now winning Tests against Australia. Many cite the allure of playing in front of big, full stadia.
Excuses aside, what are we willing to do to bring fans back, or draw new ones in?
Harry Joneshttps://https://ift.tt/iZxYXJL in a losing embrace – what must change in Australian rugby to fix the game’s key problem
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