In fairness, there are probably more members of the public looking at cycling news (on the back of Wiggins and Froome, etc and the Tour de France coming to England), than there are, trying to find out who's gone bust in RL or, whether the sport has a new sponsor. So yes, cycling is that popular.

International BBC readers comes down to two things:
1. How important our domestic competitions are to other countries - ie the Premier League will interest people all around the world, Wimbledon will draw in international tennis fans etc.
2. How many British expats there are around the world reading the BBC website.

Tour de France gets more viewers IN FRANCE alone than all RL competitions do around the world all year......it's true because the IRB paid for it to be so




Cricket eh? Not popular you say eh?





yes they do.....they paid for 6 games at the RLWC and almost got their monies worth

Absolutely spot on - and there is some evidence that this fact has been accepted at the top of the game with current (professional) expansion taking place through the Championships.

Don't know about paid for it but your clearly using the IRB calculator!

French audience Tour de France = 61mill
Australian audience NRL/SOO/RLWC2013 = 120million

Hmmmmmm

Sorry to disappoint you but, the Aussie viewing figures aren't the b-all and end all in world sport and cycling isn't just watched in France.
Having said that, I'm sure that RL features heavily on the BBC equivalent in Aus, Although RL is only 5th on the ABC website

Minority sport, given the coverage a minority sport deserves. Whats the problem?

Regards

King James

bored children with to much time on there hands.

Warm Regards,

Grown ups.

Rather than mock my post in a playground kind of way, prove me wrong. Around 90,000 people play rugby league in the UK. Compare that to tennis (400k) and cricket (1.7million) and whilst participation rates in cycling are hard to come by, 200,000 people took part in sky rides across the uk last year.

So yes, rugby league is a minority sport, played in the main, by lower socia-economic groups.

Regards

King James

Yep, bar the English expats abroad and some other Commonwealth people having a read of English cricket news, I can't see it being that popular. I don't believe many Mexicans or Russians would know what Cricket is, let alone read about it.

are we counting POTENTIAL audiences now? Quick, someone tell the IRB and their 4 billion......

Cricinfo.com is, I believe, the busiest sports website on the planet.......The BBC is one of, if not, the largest news organisation on the planet.
I find it funny that certain insecure RL fans expect global coverage because 8k people in Bristol attended a game

A lot of people play Tennis recreationally, rather than joining a club or league. It's the same as saying someone who goes down to the pool for a swim counts towards participation for swimming in the UK. You may now realise cycling is classed as the no.1 sport in England, again mostly due to recreational activities. 1.7m Cricket players? Try 148, 300.

Probably down to India's huge population, but Cricinfo is fourth btw Yahoo is number one. I don't expect global coverage you numpty, but fair is fair. I don't agree with the claims that cricket is a huge global sport, just because India has a huge population. Where are the teams outside of the Commonwealth? All I see is mostly teams full of expats, yet if that was RL you'd be mocking them.

Cricket is a more popular sport than RL both domestically in the UK and Australia, as well as globally. No amount of pigeon holing and pivoting is going to change that. Fair is Fair? How about supply and demand?
as for ex-pats.......check out the 2 countries that supplied over 55% of ALL the players at the recent RLWC

Exactly my point.

There are just short of 1m registered cricket players, with the remainder playing it recreationaly, which has never stopped rugby proclaiming that rugby league is played in khazakstan because some kid found a rugby ball on the beach and threw it to his friend. 148,300..dear lord. At least do some research.

I await your response, debunking my figures.

Kind Regards

King James

Quote ="Lebron James"which has never stopped rugby proclaiming that rugby league is played in khazakstan because some kid found a rugby ball on the beach and threw it to his friend. '" Eh? 148,300 see here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/25346493.

Quote ="Lebron James"which has never stopped rugby proclaiming that rugby league is played in khazakstan because some kid found a rugby ball on the beach and threw it to his friend. '" Eh? 148,300 see here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/25346493.

Quote ="Pinkerton"Eh? 148,300 see here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/25346493.'" www.ecb.co.uk/development/get-in ... icipation/ Regards King James

Quote ="Pinkerton"Eh? 148,300 see here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/25346493.'" www.ecb.co.uk/development/get-in ... icipation/ Regards King James

If we're counting all forms of a sport then let's compare oranges with oranges and include touch footy/rugby in the RL participation rates as it is a form of RL. Woohoo, RL is a global game played by millions of people!

Which 2 countries of the 14 at the Cricket World Cup provided 55% of the players? In fact, add two more from the 14 and tell me which ones delivered 85% of the players

Lol

[i"The game-wide study of grassroots participation revealed that a total of 908,000 people aged over 14 played cricket in teams – with a further 792,000 people playing cricket informally in the garden or on the beach."[/i

Why have you taken the Sport England figures for some sports and not others? The Sport England figures aren't brilliant (they don't include under 16's and disproportionately favour sports like athletics and cycling) but the calculations are at least constant when using figures from the same source. So why take the 400k figure for tennis but not the 148k figure for Cricket?

Did it not suit the argument?

I don't know because I didn't watch it and I'm not going to look through the various squads to count up where they were all from and then do a %. I saw the Ireland team featured on Sky Sports News and there were a few Aussies accents, so it's not just RL where they have Australians playing for other countries.

55% from two countries? Really? Seeing as the French, PNG, NZ, Fiji and Wales had many homegrown players in their ranks, I'd disagree.

English and Australian born players made up 55% (185) of the 336 players....there is a detailed list somewhere on here in a RLWC thread......you saying you disagree is hardly a defence!



Australia, New Zealand, England, France and PNG were the only sides with a majority of their players born in the country they were representing........Ireland had not one player born in Ireland, there were 2 Italians, 2 Scots, 2 Cook Islanders, 8 welsh, 9 Samoans, 8 Tongans, 12 Fijians, 6 Americans. Outside the top 5, 49 players in 9 teams were "local" whilst 167 were ringers. 167 ringers + the 45 in the England and Australian squads is 212....which is 63% of the entire list of players.

There was one player from Ireland actually, but I agree there were too many heritage players in the tournament. Countries like the USA and Italy could have picked more locals, were it not for stupid bans on certain players and I disagree with the common belief that if you're Australian, you must be good at RL. My beef is that the heritage aspect only comes up with RL, but you see Cricket teams (like England for example) with several heritage players, yet no one says a thing, but RL is continuously mocked over it.