What’s going on with league in Fiji ?
storm only got 5k and looks like the bati will get the same.
meanwhile the super rugby team sells out every home game, is league that small in Fiji they don’t even bother watching their national team ?
Its sooo rugby league that a club, the broncos, can average 40k but the national team can only pull 25k, what other sports are that club centric ?
Firstly, to clarify, the Dura don't sell out every game, this was from earlier this year against the Pacific Moana where they named 3,000. They've had other games as well where the capacity has been well below capacity during their time in Super Rugby.
Outside of the lack of history of fans in Fiji attending Rugby League matches in big numbers, the reality is every match taken so far over there has had minimal promotion. Storm v Knights had a few newspaper articles and ads, but not much else. The PMXIII match and the 40/20 Tri-Nations concept were put on and crowds were expected to turn up.
The Super League World Nines, back in 96, possibly had the most promotion, and it got the highest crowds for a RL match / event in the past 30 years.
You compare that with the Dura, and literally you can see Dura matches being promoted everywhere. There is big pushes at Nadi & Suva airports, a number of the major roundabouts in Fiji have countdowns to their next games, many of the resorts offer 'day trips' out to Dura matches, etc. They have invested in marketing and do a pretty solid job with it. The fact there is also generations of Fijians who have only ever supported Rugby Union helps as well.
The FNRL on the other hand barely has enough resources to run it's ever growing number of competitions. Rightly or wrongly, marketing is not on their list of priorities. The NRL, does itself no favours announcing a game like this so late, and then just doesn't have the network it has in Australia to push an event in Fiji.
In terms of your club v national team comparison, the reality comes down to staffing. If the Kangaroos, Kiwis or any other RL national team had the same sized marketing teams as an NRL club, it's crowds would be a lot bigger. Same if they had the certainty of fixtures. For the Broncos, their fans know they'll have 12 home games in Brisbane next year. For Kangaroos fans, we suspect they'll be playing the Great England Britain Lions in a Test Series between 1 - 3 matches, but we don't know for sure where those games will be, etc.