Numbers confirm Rugby League World Cup now utterly dwarfed by Union equivalent
While the international dimension of Rugby League has traditionally played second fiddle to the sport's club game, a comparison between League and Union's flagship international tournaments is not a flattering one for the thirteen man game.
Many hailed the increased competitiveness of Fiji, PNG and Tonga as a sign of improvement in the tournament's spectacle value, but a crunching of numbers suggests the gulf between the codes is, if anything, widening.
And increased competition is so very badly needed in the sport. Outside of New Zealand's shock win in 2008, no side other than Australia has won the tournament since 1972 - when a Great Britain team held the trophy aloft. By comparison, since Rugby Union's World Cup inaugural tournament in 1987, four different teams have won, while a fifth - France - has contested and lost three finals.
Yet at the core of the gulf is the sheer number of people in attendance.
Last year's RLWC saw 373,461 people pass through the stiles, with an average attendance across its 28 games of 13,338, a drop of 18 percent on the previous tournament's average of 16,374.
Its union equivalent in London in 2015 saw 2,477,805 attend the tournament's 48 games; this despite RWC2015 being the most expensively ticketed large-scale sporting event in history.
The average attendance of 51,621 was three times that of league's 2017 event.
Yet this attendance was not down to stadium size alone. RLWC 2017 had a stadium capacity fill percentage of just 49.75. Nowhere was this more apparent than in England's pool game with Lebanon, where just 10,237 turned up at Allianz Park, a stadium which holds 44,000.
The RLWC's ability to fill stadiums was way behind RWC2015, which enjoyed a very healthy 95 percent fill rate across its 48 games.
Many blamed the Australian public's apparent indifference to attending matches; there was an average attendance of just 11,436 across the 18 games played on Australian soil.
Neighbours New Zealand managed an average attendance of 17,601 in the seven games hosted in a country where the fifteen man code is traditionally king. It should be noted that the two matches held in PNG were both sellouts, albeit in the modestly sized 14,800 capacity Oil Search National Football Stadium.
In fact union's least attended World Cup, the somewhat thrown together 1987 tournament, still managed a gross attendance of 604,500, significantly more than league's record-breaking 2013 World Cup in England, which managed a solid 458,483.
While the NRL may still reign supreme over union in Australia, it has also seen a fall in numbers in recent years, a decline that is broadly in line with decreases in attendances in the majority of sporting codes right across the globe.
If World Cups are a vehicle to sell a sport to a wider global audience, then Rugby League would be advised to arrest this decline, otherwise it runs the risk of falling even further behind its union equivalent.
Latest Comments
Were you shocked by Sexton trying to rip Barrett's head off when he scored that final try in that return game?
Sexton once again the beneficiary of incredible double standards. Some of the rules simply didn't apply to him. The referee even watched that replay about 5 times in slow motion to see if he grounded the ball. If an NZ player had made that tackle it would have been a yellow card.
Ireland led by Sexton were the biggest bunch of whingers to ever play the game. NZ's dislike of Ireland was not caused by losing to them, it was caused by the Irish players, commentators and media being such giant crybabies.
I genuinely think Ireland are the best team in the world, and I think they will beat the ABs on Friday, but they are by some distance the team I like the least, and I know many people, not just from NZ, who feel the same.
Go to commentsThanks for the analysis Nick, thought provoking as usual. Couple of queries though, in the pic where you've circled Williams bind , I'm pretty sure it shows Stuart's knee on the ground, surely that's a NZ penalty? Also having had the chance to watch it again the All Black scrum seeems to improve after halftime, but before either England or the All Blacks replace their props. Not sure if that was the result of Tuipolutu coming on or some halftime tips. Either way this is only Williams second international season, so he'll be better for the experience.
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