Attendance figures of Rugby Union worldwide, Top 14, English Premiership, Super Rugby and others

“ In total that is 10 million people attending a rugby union club match, of which 4 million are in France and more than 2 million are in England. ”

I had a colleague who used to say that if you have taken time to formulate something and put it in writing and someone feels the need to say “So what?”, you have been wasting your time. Putting down a series of data without at least one conclusion begs the question “So what?”  

Don’t worry, though. I have at least one conclusion. 

Those figures goes a long way to explain why there is more money available for player remuneration in France and England. 

Bums on seats means attention from media companies, which means money for broadcasting and airing rights. Media presence means attention from big corporations for advertising opportunities and sponsorships. Easy peasy. 

You can even take it further and try to find reasons why there are more bums on seats. 

More exciting rugby due to a large number of internationally recognised players. Simple  and stable competition structures. No frequent competition rule changes that gets worse and worse at every change. No interventions from anywhere bar from the rugby fraternity itself. No one (or more) union that is constantly screwing one or more of the others in the backside. 

Well that's the point, it's the numbers game as in any business but a big addition to that is the foreign currency.

It's not even debatable Cera, SA with it's weak rand and prospects for greater attendance figures not likely to improve are huge factors to professional sportsmen...anybody that's blames players for building their careers and sacrificing loyalty is totally illogical and unrealistic as well as hypocritical. We would all do that if we were in the same position.