When you look at raw attendance figures they can be misleading when expressing the importance of the club to its community. A different but not necessarily better guide is the percentage of the population from each clubs catchment area that regularly attends games. This is not overly scientific and there are lots of other factors coming into play. Most obvious being the recent success of each club, its facilities and competition from other sports in that area. All the same, it's interesting, the most dramatic being Leeds at the bottom, not that most clubs wouldn’t kill for those figures.

I’ve left out London because it's not fair to compare them to anyone and Catalan because they are SL’s only regional club and thus it's hard to pin down their exact catchment area.

These are not super accurate figures but close enough, I've rounded them up to the nearest 0.5%. Apologies if I've made any huge errors, I'm sure they will be corrected.




2019 SL Figures by attendance

St Helens  11,910
Leeds Rhinos 11,838
Hull FC 11,478
Wigan Warriors 11,432
Warrington Wolves 10,970
Hull KR 8,185
Castleford Tigers 7,253
Wakefield Trinity 5,468 
Huddersfield Giants 5,222
Salford 3,676

2019 SL Figures by the percentage of the population

Average Population Percentage
Castleford Tigers 7,253 40,210 18%
St Helens  11,910 102,629  11.5%
Wigan Warriors 11,432 103,608 11%
Hull FC 11,478 130,248 (50%) 9%
Hull KR 8,185 130,248 (50%) 6.5%
Wakefield Trinity 5,468  99,251 6%
Warrington Wolves 10,970 209,547 5%
Huddersfield Giants 5,222 162,949 3.5%
Salford 3,676 103,886 3.5%
Leeds Rhinos 11,838 789,194 1.5%



 

 

Some interesting maths there!

11,910 is 8% of 102,629?

Oooohh, you've done it now FC, I hope you've got you're tin hat ready



More interestingly, those figures do show what effect a little bit of success (or lack of it) has in terms of support.
Both Wigan and Leeds attendances have fallen alarmingly from just a few years ago.
IIRC both of them were around 15k average.
Cas too, were somewhere around 9k

Nah I put the disclaimer on there if you worried about the pedants in life you'd say nowt

Apologies, 11.5%, is that near enough for you?

4 of those SL clubs dont have competition in their own town/city, (not a football club within 20-30 minutes) so the ones who do, leeds, fc, kr and wigan seem to well still in that case

Leeds don't in statistical terms but the rest do, that's why I did note there were other factors. Also as the crow flies Elland road isn't much further from BV than it is from Headingly. Trinity definitely suffers from football encroachment from both Leeds and Barnsley as I suspect a fair few others do, most notably Salford and the two Manchester clubs, Old Trafford is almost in Salford.

Interesting analysis but as you say very hard to do with any degree of accuracy. With my area I think you need to include east Yorkshire as well as hull, because a large part of FCs support comes from the edge of hull which is in the East riding, villages such as brough cottingham willerby anlaby and hessle, also Beverley. All these areas are part of the rugby community, most players live there and draw support from them. I'm sure rovers will make a similar case for the East side. Each club will have different community geographical boundaries so it's not always as simple as just using the city population and dividing it between resident clubs.

if your doing towns/cities populations to their clubs crowds, only fair to dismiss those football clubs you named, elland road is still in leeds, regardless if it isnt much futher to belle vue! salford now have to compete against their own cities football club, many salford fans will say its a city in itself...not manchester

Why stop at football clubs? All of our clubs are competing with all manner of things people can spend their leisure dollar on - whether its a family night at the cinema or a Friday night out on the lash. For some clubs, that represents an awful lot of competition.

Considering some teams brought no more than a taxi full of fans to our stadium as they knew they would get a hiding. I’m surprised we had the highest average attendance. That said, we do have the bonus that Wigan and Warrington are close by who bring a lot of fans

Leeds attendances have suffered for 2 reasons, firstly and predominantly the reduced capacity due to redevelopment and somewhat the poor couple of seasons, Leeds attendances will go back up over next couple of years with full ground capacity again.

This comes up every few years, and it always shows Castleford in a good light, what it does not say is Castleford draw huge numbers of their fan base from Pontefract Knottingley kippax Allerton Bywater and well into Selby District, and a Normanton a bit of a 3 way split. Castleford Pontefract Knottingley close to 100k

Also conveniently forgot South if the river un Leeds is traditionally Hunslet territory you Know the other professional RL side in Leeds ok they are not the Big club they used to be but there is a huge population in that area that will bot follow Leeds.

bit of a myth that my next door neighbour lives in Wakey comes from hunslet and supports Leeds

A bit of a silly statement there, it's like saying Leeds draw their support from Rothwell and Stourton and Middleton and Thorpe and Morley and East Ardsley and Churwell and Horsforth and

I'll give you the first point but the second one, no way!

That may have been the case circa 1919 but not in 2019, seriously.

Interesting stats and like some posters have already said they can be flawed depending on what you want to use.
Probably the only sure fire way of proving if figures are falling which I`m sure they are is to publish the average attendance for all the clubs over say a 5 year period.
Even with Headingley under redevelopment I don`t think it ever reached it`s (reduced) capacity.

Alternatively it’s a league table to show which clubs have reached their potential for crowds and which have bigger scope for growth.

It's not really though...

Why not?

You never go to any games so you literally cannot talk about attendances.

The problem is that it doesn't take into account other factors. For example, Wigan is the most northerly Super League team, so pretty much everyone in Lancashire who follows rugby league follows Wigan, as there isn't a top flight team in Lancashire (and I mean the whole of Lancashire, as of course Wigan is in Greater Manchester). You could apply the Catalan argument to Wigan quite easily. Saints probably do the same with Merseyside.

Similarly, Cas have that hinterland sewn up between them and Hull, which includes places like Selby.

Lol what ???

Both Hulls are further North than Wigan, as are Leeds, Wakey, Castleford, Huddersfield......

I meant in the west. Sorry