Rugby kept the show going during the dark days of the pandemic, albeit as Leo Cullen observed, games without crowds took all the fun out of it really. But the sport is still feeling the effects and is maybe even paying a price for doing so as well.
The annual Leinster-Munster affair at the Aviva, which returns next Saturday, illustrates this. Leinster missed out on their marquee URC game in the 2020-21 season when their traditional Aviva Stadium fixture against Munster was one of the victims of the pandemic, so that when it was rearranged in August 2021 the encounter took place behind closed doors.
Having the fixture rearranged for May last season didn’t help, but the 32,411 attendance was the lowest for the Leinster-Munster derby at the Aviva Stadium since it was first relocated to the redeveloped Lansdowne Road in 2010, when a crowd of 50,645 turned up.
Of the dozen Leinster-Munster games in the various reiterations of this competition, last May’s turnout was the only time it failed to break the 40,000 mark.
As of yesterday, ticket sales for next Saturday’s game were about 35,000 and so, as the week progresses, that figure still might reach 40,000.
Of course, this is all a far cry from the then world record 82,208 which witnessed the seismic Champions Cup semi-final at Croke Park in May 2009 or even the 50,120 attendance for the sides’ last meeting at the Aviva in October 2018.
Helped by its Christmas slot in the calendar, the annual Munster-Leinster meeting at Thomond Park remained a guaranteed sell-out until last season, when a Covid-enforced rescheduling led to an attendance of 20,657 for the clash in early April.
There are a myriad of other factors at work here, both generally and in relation to this specific fixture. Crowds are down across the sport since the pandemic, during which supporters became used to watching games on television rather than attending in person.
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In the last full season before Covid hit, 2018-19, the average home attendance for the four Irish provinces was 12,502, which last season was down to 10,242. Each of the quartet saw a reduction in their average URC attendance when comparing the two seasons, with Leinster’s average attendance dropping from 17,242 to 14,138, and likewise for Ulster (13,835 down to 11,469), Munster (12,918 down to 11,345) and Connacht (6,013 down to 5,081).
However, the same was true of the Welsh average in the two seasons (6,937 to 6,340) and the Scottish average (7,283 to 5,666). Reduced attendances have been an issue in the Premiership too, and as the move to Coventry saw crowds gradually diminish, assuredly contributed to Wasps’ unfortunate woes as well. It’s also worth noting that Leinster, Ulster and Munster remain the three best-supported sides in the URC, in that order.
In another sense, this fixture and provincial derbies especially are paying a price for keeping the show on the road, in that it led to too much of a good thing. In the year following the resumption of rugby in August 2020 to June 2021, there were 21 Irish provincial derbies, including five meetings between Leinster and Munster. So, when they meet again there’s a certain ho-hum in the air.
In contrast, had there been no rugby at all during the pandemic, one ventures that the crowds would have come flooding back, but other factors have also mitigated against that. Perhaps the biggest is that the URC is back on free-to-air television, and not exclusively in Irish, which provides supporters with ample opportunity to maintain the habits developed during the pandemic when the stadium doors were shut to them.
This is undoubtedly a massive boost for the competition’s profile and for sponsors, but it is less conducive towards luring the casual fans to the turnstiles.
Then there are the upcoming November Tests against the World champions South Africa, just a fortnight on from next Saturday’s game there, as well as Fiji and Australia, not to mention the upcoming Munster clash with South Africa at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Thursday, November 10th, which is a sell-out.
Throw in the rising cost of petrol/diesel and travel, and the expense of the modern match-day experience, and it’s no wonder that so much of the rugby industry is finding the games a harder sell lately. Maybe they should start looking at other examples to reduce the cost of going to games, witness the Atlanta Falcons NFL franchise at their new Mercedez-Benz Stadium, whose price caps on 50 per cent of their food and drink for the last two years have proved a huge success with supporters.
True, Leinster’s new fan zone is proving a huge success, and the province did have an attendance of 16,844 for their recent thriller with the Sharks, most likely in part because the Bulls’ win at the RDS in the semi-finals last May has upped the ante with South African opposition.
Perhaps the same sense of jeopardy for the Leinster-Munster has been diluted on foot of Leinster’s increasing dominance of the fixture, and particularly Munster’s record at the Aviva. They have lost 11 of their dozen games there since the old Lansdowne Road was redeveloped and reopened, as well as suffering dispiriting defeats by Saracens, Scarlets and Toulouse in big knock-out games in recent times.
In truth, the rivalry has been remarkable, so much so that Leinster-Munster games have consistently been the best supported non-Test fixture in world rugby for over a decade. Despite last season’s reduced figure at the Aviva the fixture remained the best attended for any one-off game in the United Rugby Championship, even eclipsing the final, as will most likely be the case again in the regular season.
Confirmation that Wasps followed Worcester in going into administration yesterday in what is a grim time for the Premiership and particularly all those employed by those two clubs, is in stark contrast to the relative health of the provinces.
Cullen also maintained that next Saturday, like last Friday in Galway, will still be a celebration of Irish provincial derbies. And he’s right. It will be.
