I agree with your sentiments 100%. I simply pointed out that as it stood and using full seasons data, RL/RU weren't as close as was suggested.

The Current averages are
Premiership - 36,025
Championship - 17,117
Aviva - 12,156
Superleague - 10,119
League 1 - 6,886

Feed Me? Won't listen?

I simply used widely available data to show that Union and leagues crowds over their last 2 respective seasons were not as close as some would have you believe (48% difference was the figure. I didn't introduce other sports to this debate about SL attendances, nor did I attempt to paint either football or Union in a bad light to make Superleague attendances look better.

I have since posted the current figures, which currently show Superleague averaging considerably more than last year, some 22% up and only 20% behind the Aviva, but no doubt you'll ignore this and carry on with the unfounded abuse.

As it Currently stands and using the format originally supplied by bewareshadows, The premiership is tailed by 110% by the Championship, which leads the Aviva by 40%, which itself heads the SL by 20% which is 47% ahead of third level football.

As I say, governing bodies are rightly concerned about falling attendances, but it is only League fans who seem infatuated by them!

This is the key thing. Reality is we have 3 top international sides and then other making up the numbers. Where would RU be if they only had Eng, Aus and NZ as top teams? If the Welsh, Irish and French RU teams were as far behind the England side as their RL counterparts are then they probably wouldn't even be a 6 nations tournament going on right now which would leave you waiting for that one time of the year for serious internationals when the Southern Hemisphere boys come to play (pretty much like what we have).

Likewise with cricket if it was mainly made up of just Eng/Aus/NZ. They might well still be having a World Cup like they're hosting now but it'd be nowhere near the size or big deal that it is. Would the Ashes have the same effect of they were playing every year due to lack of real competition?

And if you look at the likes of India in cricket and France in RU.....they do it off the back of healthy and successful club competitions in there countries.

I agree with that. I'd just add that I think the nature of professional RL means you don't actually have to be that far away but still get big scores put on you regularly.
For instance I think the likes of Italy & Argentina are just as far behind the top RU nations like England/NZ etc as France & PNG are to England/NZ/Australia in RL but the nature of the game means that in RU they can still remain competitive whereas in League they get blown away.

True. The problem is really though that the RU 6 Nations have been able to afford having a 'whipping boy' by their standards because they usually have around 4 of the teams very close with the chance of any of them winning it.

A RL 6 Nations would be the opposite. 4/5 'whipping boys' with only England going to win it.

RU = 4/5 competive teams with 1 whipping boy
RL = 1 winning team with 5 whipping boys.

When the biggest/only intrigue is who'll grab 2nd place you know it's a problem.

How did this thread get away from super league attendances to euro international league/ union?

[iSome[/i league fans. What puzzles me - albeit only in the vaguest sense - is why the infatuation with those infatuated league fans?

Nothing quite like a sweeping statement. If you took time to look at the threads from a few years back on the Hull forum you would find plenty who prefer Fridays, I know this as I am one of the.

The thread was fairly evenly split, going against your comment of most wanting Sundays.

Pearson did switch to Sundays a few seasons ago which resulted in a fall in gates.

There is no evidence at all to suggest another two thousand fans would have turned up if it was a Sunday. I fact the Warrington game at the KC in 2011 attracted over 16k and saw the away end virtually at capacity with over 3500 wire fans traveling on a Friday night.

It's not a coincidence that the 4 clubs with the highest average attendance play the majority of their games on a Friday night. Not only does this get more bums on seats but it maximises corporate revenue.

I would agree about Thursday matches though.

Is that using the Union calculator though?

Well Quins appear to be averaging over 23,000 for 2014/15 in a ground that hold 14,800 - so I would guess there is some sort of double header / Wembley / Twickers / freebie / whatever skewing going on . . . .

And that demonstrates the difficulty. So in the opening weekend of RU. There are 2 60k+ attendances.

In RL we have the Magic Weekend, does that count as an attendance for every match etc.

My point was that RU get 2k crowds and 20k crowds.
RL get 2k or less when london where in and we press the destruct button, but actually no one outside of RL is paying attention to the numbers attending. Take a random sample of people on the street and ask them who won a RU match at the weekend. Chances of finding someone to answer that question correctly are about as likely as someone giving you the correct answer for a RL match. Because those taking an active interest in the club games are not that far apart.


It was not a statistical point, but a point that other sports do not go wild over fullhouses or low attendances. That is left to the clubs to sort out, not the governing bodies.

Well 80k at Twickers isn't to be sniffed at when we can't get 40k for one day in the Magic, even when we plonk it in the centre of the heartlands.

..indeed. How dare they charge a tenner a ticket and Fill Twickenham for a game. Bounders! Cads!
There is nothing stopping say Wigan or Leeds taking a regular season game to Anfield or even Elland road other than their fear of not filling those grounds. Saracens fill Wembley with 80,00 people who haven't a clue what's
going on....that's just clever and efficient marketing.

6,346 on for Fev v Bulls and 4531 for Leigh v London today

Really impressive attendances today, does anyone know how many home supporters were at Featherstone and how many were Bradford? Seems Bradford are gonna be taking a really decent following with them everywhere all year which is really gonna help the championship average, especially if they can get their home average around say 6,000.

Saints website still showing the gate as TBC - anyone know what it was?

Only there really wasn't 80k there, or an awful lot came "disguised as red seats"!

Yep, the lure of promotion WILL immediately affect attenances, as some of us have been saying for over a decade!

I think that was Fevs 1st home game for almost 5 months due to their pitch problems and they had been pleading with the fans to come in numbers to put some cash in the coffers.

We took about 2000 today and created a great atmosphere as we did at Leigh a fortnight ago. There's a really good buzz around the Bulls at the moment, on and off the field - the club is being properly run which it hasn't been for years, and of course winning helps!

Great attendance at Leigh as well, they are probably going to be pushing up to 5000 as the season goes on.

The attendance at Fev today was higher than Salford or Widnes this weekend, and only about 1000 fewer than Hull KR and Wigan.

The distance for Bulls fans wasn't exactly crossing the Pennines though was it.

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Bradford to Leigh is actually crossing the Pennines and we took 2000 to that game

where were the bulls fans last season?

are the thousands of glory fans that deserted them coming back now

its a mystery, nothing on the rfl or bbc websites

Then you probably should have took more to Featherstone.