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Gerry Thornley: France’s love affair with watching rugby dwarfs participation levels

Rugby is only France’s 10th most popular sport for participation yet viewing figures for the World Cup compare with the highs of its soccer equivalent

France's scrumhalf Antoine Dupont greets fans as he attends a welcoming ceremony for the team at the Parc du Bois-Preau in Rueil-Malamaison, near Paris. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty

Gerry Thornley's face
Gerry Thornley
Fri Sep 8 2023 - 13:24

Cast a cursory glance at the newspaper and magazine racks in any of the ‘Relay’ newsagents which proliferate Bordeaux and Paris, or go through the TV channels, and there’s little doubt that the 2023 Coupe du Monde is the main show in France.

Rugby’s popularity exploded when they last hosted the tournament in 2007, and as long as Les Bleus are in the Rugby World Cup, it seems sure to do so again, even rivalling football.

Much like Ireland, rugby in France is dwarfed in terms of playing numbers by bigger sports, but enjoys an interest level and audience which is not commensurate with its participation numbers.

Football remains, by far, the sport with the most registered players (2,130,054) in France and with numbers on the increase annually. Unsurprisingly, when one sees the preponderance of courts and clubs around the country and the volume of French players generally in both the men’s and women’s top 100, tennis is in second place, with the French Tennis Federation recording an increasing number of players, 1,019,597.

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Horse riding is third, with 692,400, and this is also the sport which is most represented by women, accounting for about 80 per cent of its numbers. Basketball is fourth and after football, is the team sport with the most playing numbers, 678,482, with registrations on the rise again after a significant drop.

Similarly, judo has had a recent revival with over 100,000 more French people taking up the sport in the last two years, taking their numbers to 462,838 and retaining their place in the top five.

Handball (456,086) and golf (441,961) are next, followed by swimming (379,916) and canoeing (316,366), while rugby makes it into the top 10 with 303,048 registered players, a figure which is actually on the up.

However, this is not reflected in the sport’s huge viewing popularity, and the latest agreement by the LNR (ligue national de rugby) with Canal+ to retain the domestic rights to the Top 14 rugby union competition in a four-year deal until the end of the 2026-27 campaign, worth some €454.4 million (US$549.1 million), an increase of 17 per cent on the previous deal.

The 2007 Rugby World Cup constituted something of a benchmark both in France and globally, as it was the most successful Rugby World Cup tournament in its then 20-year history.

Matches in that tournament were the top six viewed programmes of any description in France during 2007. More than 21 million viewers in France tuned in to watch the France versus England semi-final at Stade de France, a figure which the then International Rugby Board Chairman, Bernard Lapasset, claimed was bigger than the figure achieved for the soccer World Cup final in Paris when France beat Brazil in the same stadium in 1998 (20.57 million viewers).

Taking into account the estimated 3 million views on Canal+ this is probably true. The semi-final between France and England set a new French audience record for the sport, with 18.3 million viewers and a market share of 67.4 per cent, TF1′s biggest audience of the year by far.

The shock French victory over tournament favourites New Zealand in the quarter-finals drew an audience of more than 16.6 million, while France’s game against Ireland earlier in the tournament was watched by 14.5 million on TF1. France’s pool matches were followed by an average audience of 12.1 million viewers.

Interestingly, unlike its footballing equivalent, the 2007 Rugby World Cup drew a strong female demographic, with 40 per cent of the audience made up of women. This has largely been attributed to the phenomenal popularity of Sébastien Chabal, at that time especially.

The 19.3 million viewers for France’s victory over Croatia on TF1 for the 2018 Fifa World Cup final became the channel’s second-best historical audience after that of 1998.

Last year’s football World Cup final, when Argentina beat France, drew 19.3 million viewers on TF1, lower than for the 1998 final but those people who watched the match outside their home in bars on big screens, or on their own tablets, were once again not counted by Médiamétrie.

It’s believed that new metrics may be used to include them for this Rugby World Cup, but either way it’s clear that rugby enjoys an explosion of interest in France when the tournament rolls around, and especially when it is on French soil.