Super League Crowds

[Jackal Dog]

Are the Broncos/Quins going to be playing at Twickenham next year? if so that would be great!!

 

[Stevo_G]

london would be playin at harlequins ground the stoop next year, i think it's near twickenham

 

[In-goal]

twickenham stoop is the name of there ground

 

[hutch]

True! which is all well and good if you want to concentrate on SL's success stories. I don't think the person responsible for this thread has any interest in the reasons why SL crowds are approximately half of what NRL crowds are, anymore than he/she is interested in the culture of sport within those regions more apposite to the sport.

well mate, since you seem to know everything about super league, why are sl crowds half of what the nrl are? and also, please explain the culture of the sport within these regions?

i am all for super league success stories, i love watching super league and follow it as close as you can from the other side of the world. i think it has a huge future, especially if it expands into other areas of britain and europe. they are starting to do it now, i just dont understand why it has taken 100 years.

 

[In-goal]

i am all for super league success stories, i love watching super league and follow it as close as you can from the other side of the world. i think it has a huge future, especially if it expands into other areas of britain and europe. they are starting to do it now, i just dont understand why it has taken 100 years.
__________________

might have something to do with a sport named Rugby Union, remeber players were banned for playing Rugby League before 1995.

 

[bartman]

From official website today - it's been the best year for crowds in a while...

http://www.superleague.co.uk/news/1968

engage Super League X is a record breaker!

The 2005 competition has generated the highest weekly average attendance in Super League history.

The average weekly attendance at the conclusion of the 28 Rounds of the Regular season stands at 8,887, generated by an aggregate attendance of 1,493,084 supporters.

Those figures are an increase on the 2004 season, which generated an average of 8,570 from an aggregate of 1,439,851.

The 2005 competition has also generated the highest weekly average attendance for an elite League since the introduction of multiple divisions to the sport in 1973.

Also during 2005 the following records have been broken:

- There has been a record number of five figure attendances at matches – 68 in engage Super League 2005 (previous best was 61 in 2004).

- There has been a record number of matches attracting attendances of 20,000 or more - Six in engage Super League (previous best was 4 in 2003).

- A new record crowd for a Super League Regular season game 25,004 set by Wigan v St Helens in Round 7.

- Leeds Rhinos are the best supported club with a weekly average of 17,007

- The average weekly attendance for the engage Super League competition has risen every season since 2001.

Commenting on the figures, the Executive Chairman of the Rugby Football League Richard Lewis said: “It is fitting that a new all time average attendance record has been set as the completion of the first decade of Super League approaches. During 2005 we have seen a tremendously exciting and competitive Regular season with play-off positions being determined on the last weekend.

“The spectacle and experience of engage Super League has continued to deliver tremendous family sporting entertainment and we believe the competition will continue to offer this and indeed grow in its next decade.“

Meanwhile, Richard Lewis also explained that supporters are snapping up seats for the forthcoming championship decider, the Grand Final at Old Trafford.

He said: “The battle for the engage Super League championship is now reaching an exciting culmination and we look forward with excitement and anticipation to what is set to be a fascinating Play-Off series.

“Grand Final tickets continue to sell at a rapid rate and we would encourage supporters to secure their seats for the title decider as soon as possible.”

 

[mikdalton]

This post needs some perspective.


In Sydney, Brisbane etc RL is the main draw. It is nowhere in the UK. It is a fairly small game confined largely to the north of England and played largely in mid sized towns around some of the major northern cities which have no RL presence at all, such as Manchester and Liverpool. Leeds is the exception to this rule. Liverpool has approximately four clubs within 30 miles of its city centre yet the vast majority in Liverpool do not know this or care.

Widnes is a town of just 55000 people and averages 6800. Thats 12%. That is more than the percentage of Liverpool soccer or pretty much any premier league team. We also border Warrington and St Helens and are not far from Wigan so its not like we have a larger catchment area. These three towns as well have approximately 100,000 people. Not exactly massive.

RL isn't doing well here in Salford, London, Huddersfield and Wakefield but these are largely due to a lack of success or being swamped by soccer. Salford has been swamped by Man U. Huddersfield and Wakefield have been almost joke teams at certain periods. What is important though is that they are at least growing. If you average 4000, its not suddenly gonna shoot up to 20,000.

RL's main problem is lack of publicity. On most days you'll shift through about 8-10 pages of sport to find a paragraph on RL. RL does well where there is local interest in the game but because of the lack of publicity nationally it painfully struggles in places like London or Salford because its hard to be a fan of something when theres no one to strike up conversation about it with.

 

[jed]

Very well put, mik.

Superleague is going through a similar situation to the Melbourne Storm or NZ Warriors, being a team competing in a city where a dominant sport already has a stranglehold - AFL in Melbourne, and Rugby Union in NZ. That said, the small (and growing) number of fans are passionate about their team, and things will improve over time.

Also, not all ESL teams are based out of huge stadiums, some grounds are only capable of containing 5-10 thousand fans. In an ideal world they'd all have stadiums like Knowsley Road or Galpharm Stadium, but with the promotion/relegation system that's in place, so unless you're sharing the ground with a Union or Football team, building a huge stadium is not necessarily viable when there's no guarantee that you'll be in Superleague in a season or two. And as passionate as the fans are about the side, you're never going to pull the same crowds for a NL1 or NL2 game as you will for a game between (current) top sides like St Helens and Leeds.

 

[St.John]

In an ideal world they'd all have stadiums like Knowsley Road or Galpharm Stadium

In an ideal world, nobody would have a stadium like Knowsley Road. And I'm a Saints fan.

 

[jed]

lol, sorry, you'll have to forgive this poor Aussie ;-) I was meaning Hull's stadium.

Yeah, Saints ground is better than Atlantic Solutions though

 

[SalfordRedsWA]

League in the UK has a completely different heritage background than in Aus. Sydney and Brissy have League as their major sports and have always have done. Cities like Salford and Bradford have had to pedal second to soccer for the past 100-odd years.

Then you have the evil union code thats been trying to kill League for 100 years with its big influences in the London/Southern based media. You cannot compare the expansion of the code in the two countries.

 

[Calixte]

I think all of you are underplaying the role of rugby league in England.

True, as is so boringly portrayed in the London broadsheets (a practice of marginalisation being, or already, adopted by a number of newspapers in Australia in their writings on the great game), rugby league is a primarily "northern" game. Yet the most recent playing figures for England show the strongest growth areas are London and Wales.

There is a great depth of players throughout the universities and technical colleges of England also. The top teams regularly come from outside the traditional heartlands of the game.

Rugby league is the second biggest spectator sport and the second biggest sports product on pay television in England.

Historically, rugby league has played second fiddle to soccer (as in both indicia immediately above); but then so has every other sport in England - bar none. In terms of attendances, soccer dwarfs every other form of leisure in the country.

Rugby league still dominates many towns and population centres across the north of England. Warrington, Wigan and St Helens are true rugby league towns. They are not cities of Sydney's ilk but they are not insignificant either.

Insofar as Bradford is concerned, well, the alleged dominance of soccer (as posted earlier) is debatable. Certainly the biggest sporting crowd ever in Bradford was a rugby league crowd - the 1954 Challenge Cup Final Replay at Odsal Stadium.

Robert Gate's excellent book (incorporating a whole range of relevant data) suggests that at least 130,000 people were present, and the traffic jam of people who never reached the ground continued for many miles from the stadium.

This was a true congregation (in every sense) of people from all over England, and particularly northern England, and it showed that rugby league was the biggest sport in a communal sense to those in the north of England (not something rugby union can claim in respect of any similar sized portion of England).

No such crowd has been experienced in the north of England for soccer in the history of that game.

Rugby league in England consists of many, many very passionate fans who are able to create amazing atmosphere at matches; often in relatively small, local, "boutique" stadia. This is reflected in the Super League averages posted in this thread.

That does not, however, diminish the importance of the game in England.

 

[bartman]

Good points.

Does Bradford even have a football/soccer team? I knew Leeds United were close-by, but I'm not aware of any other teams there among the higher divisions... Therefore I'd imagine the average league crowds at Odsal would dwarf whatever crowds attend football/soccer matches around Bradford?

 

[Weasels Ripped My Flesh]

I recall playing 'Total Club Manager 2005' and remembering that Bradford had a side about 3 divisions down from the Premier League.

 

[terracesider]

http://hullfc.rlfans.com/sltable.php?year=2005&attendance=
Yes, Bartman, Bradford does have a pro-soccer club: Bradford City, who started life as Manningham, the first Northern Union League champioship winners in 1895.

 

[bartman]

Ta Terracresider and WRMF. Funny, just today I saw a sticker on the back of a car for Bradford City FC here in York. Horizontal stripey jersey...

It's amazing how in those old days some clubs up here completely swapped codes? It must have been a fascinating time to live, the first quarter of last century...

 

[In-goal]

Bradford were only in the Premiership a few years back playing at the Valley Parade, remeber when Leeds Utd were in the Champions League. memories

 

[In-goal]

by the way thats a great piece Calixte.

 

[lyon is a saint]

Ta Terracresider and WRMF. Funny, just today I saw a sticker on the back of a car for Bradford City FC here in York. Horizontal stripey jersey...

It's amazing how in those old days some clubs up here completely swapped codes? It must have been a fascinating time to live, the first quarter of last century...

You live in York... yet you aint heard of Bradford city?

Deary me butcher!

 

[bartman]

:lol: I guess it helps when the York team has been down in the conference ever since I arrived? Most football talk these days over here is only about Premier League...

The rugby league team here should beat the football team's average crowds next year the way things are going, a big turn around from 3 years ago so I'm told.