English rugby attendances reach season high, but there’s more to do
Attendances in rugby union’s English Premiership reached a season high across the New Year weekend, when five games saw an average crowd of 13,160.
Gloucester Rugby’s low-scoring 8-6 win over London Irish sold more than 16,000 tickets, while Bath, Saracens and Northampton Saints claimed sell-outs too.
Sale Sharks did not sell out at the weekend but their attendance of 9,500 was still their highest of the season and the first time they had edged close to the 10,000 mark since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
It marks a turning point for Premiership Rugby given the league’s inability to sell out more than one game in any previous round this season.
The attendances seen at the weekend point to 96.26 per cent of the available seats sold, which is the highest the league has seen this term.
But the figures also need to be put into context. The combined total of 65,789 fans would fit into Manchester United’s Old Trafford with just under 9,000 seats to spare.
And the average attendance of 13,159 was beaten by more than 1,000 a week earlier in the United Rugby Championship, the Irish-Welsh-Scottish-Italian-South African competition seen as the new kid on the block in terms of leagues looking for growth.
This average attendance is also lower than across the last five seasons, excluding Covid-19, since 2013-14 where the game average was 12,754, though this includes showpiece matches played at bigger venues.
Fundamental attendance point
But there’s another, more fundamental, point with attendances and that’s how they are reported.
Some clubs report tickets sold, others actual attendance, and others a mixture of the two – “have enough tickets been sold that no more will be purchased?”.
It can often skew the data, even by just 10 tickets per match per round, but when this happens every week it adds to a significant number – over 1,000 in a season.
There is, however, a wider point to the success of the festive attendance rise. If clubs are able to cut prices and market games properly once, there surely can be the opportunity to do that on multiple occasions.
Yes there may be the draw of a Christmas or New Year fixture, but the prices and occasion of games is attractive in itself – especially when the league is as competitive as it is.
If clubs can remain in the black on matchday, this must be a tactic going forward, because full stadiums make onlookers feel like they must be part of the action.
Premiership rugby has struggled this season and has faced a lot of criticism from fans and parliament committees, but this weekend can be seen as a shining light of what can be achieved – even if the total attendance at the weekend was surpassed by just three matches in the French Top14.