By BrianC
November 10 2004

With all clubs having now played at least three normal home games in the 2004/5 season we can now see some patterns emerging. The pattern is of overall growth, in a number of cases some of it quite spectacular.

Whither Rugby 2004/5

Club by club % growth on last season

For this comparison I have matched the first normal home games of this season with the equivalent rounds in the last one. For the London clubs this means I have omitted both the London Double Header figures and the first game of last season. Saracens have played one of their home fixtures in Franklins Gardens, Northampton, the resulting low gate has also been omitted from these figures. 

Sale come top of the growth league thus far, narrowly ahead of Newcastle. It is perhaps no coincidence that these teams have the two most 'bankable' England stars, Jason Robinson and Johnny Wilkinson, playing for them. Success on field must also be a factor in the case of Sale, after eight rounds and seven wins they top the Zurich Premiership.

Of all the figures outlined above perhaps the one that most impresses me is the growth shown at Newcastle. Their season on field has been unspectacular, they announced significant ticket price increases this year and they have been largely playing without their most bankable asset JW yet they still have managed this spectacular growth.

JW and the world cup factor aside I can think of two reasons to attribute this to. First and foremost Kingston Park has been developed, and continues to be so, into arguably the best rugby facility in the country. It is a joy to visit. Good transport links get you there. Once in the ground you find warm and comfortable bars, seats with good views of the pitch and a very genial clubhouse. The overall experience of a day at Newcastle, rugby aside, is a pleasant one.

Perhaps I am showing some bias here but I do feel another factor here is Newcastle's media management. They are, as far as I am aware, the only ZP club to have a full time media manager and it shows. Via the Zurich press office I probably get more press releases from Newcastle than all the other clubs put together. Whereas in general the relationship between the clubs and their supporters websites is indifferent and even in some cases hostile, Newcastle's media manager is frequently on the Falcons site promoting the club. One can be sure he works particularly hard on his relations with the local media. All this effort adds up and I'm convinced it's a factor in the growth we are witnessing.

The 31.4% growth at Harlequins can be attributed latent demand. This season there is increased capacity as a result of the new North stand and temporary seating at The Stoop. We will see this drop somewhat after Christmas as the West stand is demolished to make way for a new, larger, one. At the start of the 05/06 season the capacity of the Stoop will be 12.5k. What these figures serve to illustrate is that, as pointed out in the original Whither Rugby? series, there is substantial latent demand. The Stoop at this size will be too small. Even when it is fully developed to a capacity of 14.5k it is unlikely to meet the needs of a top flight club as we approach the end of this decade. Quins will then be faced with the same dilemma as Bath. Stay in your much loved home and decline relative to other clubs or move in the face of hostility from supporters to a larger stadium with room to grow.

Wasps on field performances at last appear to be feeding through to crowd numbers. They were second in the ZP last year, were Zurich champions and won the European cup. They are again flying high this year, currently third in the table. There is uncertainty about where they will play after this season, a move back to London appears to be on the cards. The question then will be can they bring their newly gained crowds with them?

The growth at London Irish continues to be steady. They have gone from being the second lowest supported of the clubs when records started in 97/98 to what will probably be the second highest this season with average gates in excess of 12k.  As all their main rivals at the upper end of the crowd tables, Leicester, Northampton and Gloucester are constrained by ground size it is this authors contention, now as when I first penned the London Irish article that they will be the best supported club in the country by the end of the decade.

London Irish have worked hard to make match days an experience of much more than just rugby. This has stood them in good stead as their performances on field can realistically be described as mediocre. The growth in crowds this season is against a backdrop of mostly static ticket prices and broadly similar performance on field this season compared to last. During the close season the club signed England international Mike Catt who will have played some part in attracting crowds but in general the crowds will not have been significantly boosted by England's RWC success. It is thus an argument to say that this is close to the underlying growth which London Irish are experiencing before external factors such as on field success or ticket price changes come into play.

The growth at the two West country clubs Bath and Gloucester can be wholly attributed to increases in ground size and which has been taken up by latent demand. These increases in capacity have, particularly in Baths case with three capacity crowds in three games, failed to satisfy the latent demand at both clubs. How much longer Bath can hold on at the Rec. is a matter for conjecture. To my mind it won't be long.

Leicester and to a lesser extent Northampton do poorly in this graph purely because they have not expanded their grounds last summer. On the evidence available elsewhere they both need to. The Tigers, with regular capacity crowds of 16.8k, are by some way the best supported club in the country. They were pretty well at capacity for most of last season, they are even more full now.

One thing that does concern me is the fate of two of the clubs listed above, Leeds and Saracens. Leeds are now by quite some way the lowest supported club in the Zurich Premiership. Perhaps the greatest concern is that they do not seem to be able to grow their audience in the same way as other ZP clubs have. The powers that be at Leeds have stated that they need average crowds of 9k to sustain top flight rugby union in that city. On current evidence it will be a long time before that happens, one wonders if it ever will.

When I first gathered these statistics Saracens were the only club that showed a decline over the professional era. It appears that their agony is continuing and whilst not shrinking any more they are not growing as the rest of the top flight clubs are. The result is that they continue to decline relative to the other clubs. From being second from top when records began they have declined seriously. They currently have the second lowest gates in the Zurich Premiership.

At the outset of professional rugby Saracens were widely regarded as one of the most go ahead clubs in the country. In now appears that about the only marketing strategy those in Watford have is to hope for success on field. As has been shown, most notably at London Irish and Harlequins if you get the package right you can be successful off field regardless of what happens on the pitch. One can only assume that Saracens are hemorrhaging a substantial amount of money at the moment. I can only hope that their backers have both deep pockets and the vision to turn things around.

One final word on the team that are not listed above but who have brought so much with them to the ZP this season, Worcester. They are not in the above figures because it is pretty futile either comparing them to Rotherham or to the previous seasons ND1 figures. After four home games their gates currently average over 7.5k, quite a remarkable achievement. Even if they do come twelfth this year I cannot see the powers that be wanting them to drop.