Union. : Thu Nov 02, 2017 7:24 pm  

Is it a bigger sport than league. When I’ve seen some games on Sky( channel surfing) the stadiums look as empty as a Giants or Salford game,so I’m guessing it’s just the money and backing it relieves than our sport does.

Reason I’ve brought this up is these up coming Union internationals, Sky are ramming it down our throat virtually every advert break, our sport gets nothing like the same exposure.

Re: Union. : Thu Nov 02, 2017 7:43 pm  

The league attendances aren't too dissimilar, and I imagine the Premiership TV viewing figures maybe around the same, but RU internationals are relatively massive compared to league.

Re: Union. : Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:52 pm  

Back in the day when we had international tours and GB v Australia test series we also had sell out crowds. Since then we opted for summer rugby, hence no tours, and dropped the GB brand. Two home goals. RU win.

Re: Union. : Thu Nov 02, 2017 11:17 pm  

More people know about and watch union than league probably just because it's a historical/cultural thing. People watch union in England because that's what everyone else does. People watch league in Aus because that's what everyone else does.

Re: Union. : Fri Nov 03, 2017 12:26 am  

karetaker wrote:

Is it a bigger sport than league. When I’ve seen some games on Sky( channel surfing) the stadiums look as empty as a Giants or Salford game,so I’m guessing it’s just the money and backing it relieves than our sport does.

I’ve got to ask what you’re watching; Sky haven’t had rights to the Aviva Premiership for a few years now, and the average attendance in that league last season was over 15,000. They do show Super Rugby from the Southern Hemisphere, where the games in Australia and particularly South Africa are prone to having sparse crowds in huge stadiums, but most Aviva Premiership games are played to busy crowds in stadiums of 15-20,000, and regular games between some clubs at Twickenham and Wembley can get 70,000. It doesn’t give me any pleasure to say it, and we can discuss the reasons going back to 1895, but to argue there is an equivalence in club attendances is just not right.

Re: Union. : Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:14 am  

I've seen similar figures too. More telling is the continual rise. Union attendances are on a decent upward trend year on year, where as SL attendances are generally flat over the last few years.

But the TV figures are even more stark. Since BT took over the rights in 2013, the viewing figures have been on the up and up. They were up a staggering 13% on last season. Just goes to show what a decent broadcaster can do when they genuinely invest in the package, rather than just buy it to use as a filler when the football isn't on.

Re: Union. : Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:14 am  

Stats are always misleading.
1% with Fox or terrestrial tv is huge.
13% of nothing is nothing.
BT sport is very much next to nothing.

Re: Union. : Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:38 am  

rubber duckie wrote:

Stats are always misleading.
1% with Fox or terrestrial tv is huge.
13% of nothing is nothing.
BT sport is very much next to nothing.

I get what your saying, and it is difficult to get actual figures as Sky are shrewd about them, but looking at various reputable news articles -

276,000 people tuned in to watch London Wasps against Leicester Tigers on BT (2014 news article)
An early season Wigan vs Huddersfield game on Sky Sports in February attracted an average audience of 299,300.

Yes they're cherry picked figures due to the difficulty in finding anything, but I think it's fair to say that the BT sport numbers are not "very much next to nothing". The growth rate of Union on TV is very real, and very significant, while League still stagnates.

Re: Union. : Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:47 am  

Some of the Aviva Premiership average attendances are heavily skewed by their event games at places such as Wembley.

e.g. if you get 5K attendance at each of 9 home games, then have a Wembley mega match that gets 75k then all of a sudden your (mean) average attendance is 12k !

That's not to say they aren't doing well to get 75k for their one-off Wembley games, just that people often go along for it as an event and it doesn't translate into sustained crowd increases.

Re: Union. : Fri Nov 03, 2017 1:01 pm  

I sense that Union is ramping up quite aggressively against RL....last night I tuned into BBC R5 last night...now I missed the start...but no mention at all about the RLWC....plenty of stuff about meaningless Autumn RU internationals though...they can spin an hour talking poop about nothing...its all about spin, good PR and the old boys network