'Whither Rugby?' 05/06 - Continued Growth, but...

By BrianC
June 8 2006

The 2005/6 season has seen overall Premiership crowds continue to grow. A healthy increase of 4.5% was recorded over the previous season. For the first time average gates have topped the10k mark. The picture is however not a universally bright one.

As always with statistics the figures given will depend to a certain extent on how the initial numbers are interpreted, hence the figures here may vary slightly from those given elsewhere. For a more detailed explanation of the variables and my interpretation of them check The Figures Explained.

Winners and Losers

Six out of the twelve GP clubs showed little in the way of crowd growth or even drops in numbers last season. Of these the lack of growth at Bath can Leicester can be attributed to ground size constraints. That leaves four clubs, all with room to grow, who made little or no progress in the 05/06 season. This then begs the question, Why?

No doubt there is a mixture of factors in all cases. These in turn will apply to each club in varying degrees. The ones this author can think of are:

- Ticket pricing: The drop in numbers at Gloucester can to a good degree be placed at the door of ticket price increases. Looking at the figures, and I will grant that there are some caveats, it seems to me that the main impact of these is spread over a few seasons. For example Newcastle did not increase prices much last season but seem to have suffered somewhat this one from the substantial price hikes of two years ago. I plan to look at the relationship between ticket prices and gate numbers in a later article.

- The Economy: It should not be forgotten that clubs compete for the leisure pound with the rest of the entertainment industry. In harsh economic times people tend to spend less on leisure.

- Performance on field: In the case of LI poor on-field performance certainly wasn't the case this year but there may have been a lagging impact from a string of poor previous seasons. As has been seen at other clubs a turnaround on field can take years to work through to crowd numbers. To counter that argument you could of course cite Leeds who have grown well in recent seasons despite poor results.

- Fixture list: This is usually outside the control of the clubs but can have quite an impact on numbers. One example I would give is the largest home gate of the season. It was at London Irish where 19.9k watched their 'St Patrick's' game ten days after the event against Sale who, despite their lofty position in the table and the particular importance of that game, do not bring a lot of traveling support. One does wonder what the gate would be if the visitors were Leicester and the date the 17th March.

- Quins relegation: LI, Wasps and Saracens all lost numbers in 04/05 due to the reduced crowd at the LDH. The combined gate for those fixtures last season was 35k as opposed to 51k the previous one. Further, a local club will usually bring much more traveling support. Hence all three of the 'London' clubs could have expected bigger home gates against Quins than Bristol. If nothing else it gives us all something to blame Harlequins for last season.

- Relegation battle: Last season, in the grand scheme of things, there was not really much of a relegation battle. Leeds were relegated in round 20 and pretty well down and out before then. The season beforehand, as all of us who were there can readily testify, was a humdinger. No less that seven clubs went into the last few weeks and five into the very last day facing the drop. This boosted crowds in the latter rounds of the 04/05 season against 03/04. That said, gates in the latter rounds of last season held up well against 04/05 as can be seen from the graph below.

- Market Saturation: It has been, and continues to be, argued that the market for club rugby is finite. That those clubs who have had room to grow in recent years have grown as much as is reasonably feasible. That the market is now a mature one that will see slow growth in future years. Again I'll come to this in a later article.

- Money: This is a persistent factor. With the notable exception of Leicester no club is flush with funds. This means that all clubs have to strike a balance between the resources spent on field, in the back office and on marketing. It goes without saying that marketing spend, or the lack of it, will affect numbers.

The Future "Seems" Bright

The obvious positive effects of England's win in the last world cup would now appear to have worked fully through. If there was a Lions effect, which I doubt, it would have been negative. On balance the English club game appears to be growing healthily despite this and a relatively harsh economic climate.

Some would argue that this is bad for rugby in general. That rugby is first and foremost an international game and that the principal function of clubs is to foster and provide players for the country squads. The old club vs. country debate.

The contract that underpins the relationship between the professional English clubs (Premier Rugby) and the RFU was drawn up in 2001 and runs until 2009. It is known as the Long Form Agreement. It covers many things including distribution of central funds, automatic promotion and relegation and player release for internationals. As the time for renegotiation approaches the battle lines are being drawn up. The clubs are lobbying hard against automatic relegation. The RFU is threatening to disassociate it's academies from the clubs. A rugby 'Club World Cup' has been mooted.

How the negotiations will turn out nobody knows. Recent experience suggests that Premier Rugby has generally come out of such encounters the better. Most recently the RFU had to back down and pay a substantial legal bill over the issue of player release and rest rules for the Lions tour. Whatever, it is reasonable guess that there will be a lot of blood on the walls before any agreement is signed. So entrenched do some of the opposing standpoints appear to be that there may not even be any agreement. Such an outcome could see Premier Rugby and the RFU going their separate ways.

Professional club rugby has come a long way since it's inception in the mid nineties. Overall gates have increased by an average of 5.1% per year in the professional era. With latent demand for tickets at a good number of clubs this growth looks set to continue well into the future. The big question now is can the clubs and the RFU resolve their differences. If they don't who knows what will happen?

We will continue this series by looking at how the clubs have performed against each other last season and historically.