2024 Crowd Watch

[taste2taste]

RL at the moment is a niche sport in Fiji while RU is like a religion with the “flying Fijians“ national side, the 7’s side and the super rugby team the Fijian Drua.

If that’s the case you’d think they’d price the tickets accordingly?

sell them cheap to fill the stadium. What’s the point of playing these games in Fiji if the stadium is 75% empty.

 

[Iamback]

there are probably a few T20 leagues around that get bigger crowds that international matches - particularly tests and even 50 over matches

Barcelona average 83,000 for the season, but the spanish national team played a match recently against Denmark that drew only 30,000

Correct. Even Test cricket outside of a couple of countries pulls horrible crowds

 

[warriors 95]

If that’s the case you’d think they’d price the tickets accordingly?

would make a lot of sense to do so.

sell them cheap to fill the stadium. What’s the point of playing these games in Fiji if the stadium is 75% empty.

pit could just be me but I get the feeling that RL is going backwards in Fiji compared to 6-7 years ago when it seemed like there was a good number of Fijians playing in the NRL, NSW&QUEENSLAND cup and Jersey Flegg etc.

 

[warriors 95]

Correct. Even Test cricket outside of a couple of countries pulls horrible crowds

I’m not a cricket fan but it appears to me that Outside of the ashes and maybe India or a Pakistani tour to England the rest are nothing to write home about.

 

[yakstorm]

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.

 

[yakstorm]

Ok some positive movement at Suncorp. 518 and 525 have both gone on sale on the eastern grandstand (with most of the bays inbetween being stadium members bays).

Bays in the North have increased from what was 530 - 533, to now to 528 - 535.

Seats seem to be moving reasonably quickly there as well which is encouraging. Lower bowl corners starting to look a lot better as well.

At least we're starting to move into 20K territory now.

In Auckland, second tier of the North Stand has now been put on sale and there has been definitely some solid sales around other bays in the ground.

 

[Iamback]

I’m not a cricket fan but it appears to me that Outside of the ashes and maybe India or a Pakistani tour to England the rest are nothing to write home about.

yep and 50 over games get even smaller crowds

So NRL is not alone in this regard

 

[SLRBRONCOS]

At least we're starting to move into 20K territory now.

I haven't been keeping an eye on the map so not sure if they went to every second row in some areas. If not we could be in 22-24k presold.

If level 5 south has been gifted to junior clubs and schools we'd be sitting around 27k. Good stadium members and 30k isn't out of the question.

 

[bazza]

Correct. Even Test cricket outside of a couple of countries pulls horrible crowds

Even in Australia - games that aren't against England or India tend to get poor crowds of late

 

[bazza]

That’s exactly my point, basketball is the only other sport where players will do anything they can to avoid playing internationals, USA fielded D grade teams in those tournaments…and still won 1. And like league there is only 1 team that dominates, USA have won 17 of 20 olympics and the majority of those they only sent college players.

Basket and league, the only sports where internationals are below clubs.

If only rugby league was more like hockey where there is a lot more interest in internationals every 4 years than the weekly club games

 

[bazza]

yep and 50 over games get even smaller crowds

So NRL is not alone in this regard

not sure that it is so bad having 200 club games average 20,000 and then only getting 15,000 to 6 international games at the end of the year

 

[yakstorm]

527 just gone on sale in Brisbane. 529 - 534 down to single seats now, so hopefully we'll see more parts opened up tomorrow.