South Africa at the heart of record United Rugby Championship growth in 2023/24 season
United Rugby Championship (URC) chief Martin Anayi revealed that the competition has shown impressive growth yet again, crediting South Africa’s involvement as central to that.
Since the introduction of the South African teams a couple of seasons ago the competition has shown growth every campaign as the massive rugby audience in the Rainbow Nation has got behind their sides in a big way.
Professionalism
Anayi went as far as to say that South Africa has enhanced the professionalism in the league due to their experience of running the game at that level.
“In many ways, the South Africans have taught us about professionalism and how to be professional, the game has been run along professional lines for longer there,” he said.
This campaign marks another milestone for the league as all five countries are represented in the URC quarter-finals for the first time thanks to Ospreys’ dramatic bonus-point win that edged out the Lions in the last round. For Anayi it is just another show of the URC’s strength.
“It has become a proper pan country competition and we are most proud of that, it is great to see teams from all our different nations making the playoffs,” said Anayi in a media round table at the start of the build-up week to this weekend’s start of the Finals Series.
“We haven’t had that in the previous two seasons. It tells us that the competition is working. We want jeopardy throughout the league. It was a really close run in, it went down to the last game, and to get a Welsh qualifier and Benetton getting in from Italy was great and it shows us we have a strong league. It is not just at the top end but also in the deeper reaches of the league that it is strong.”
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The numbers do not lie
Last season’s numbers have already been surpassed with the play-offs still to come. Anayi revealed there is impressive growth on just about every front.
“We have been tracking up on the metrics and breaking things down territory by territory, focusing on audience growth across social media, broadcast and ultimately bums on seats. Those are the key metrics. We have been working super hard with the clubs to show growth and healthy competition and it appears to be working,” he said.
“Our broadcast audience is up 49 percent globally, and in the UK and Ireland it is up 24 percent. Attendances are up 67 percent on last year’s record accumulative audience. Social media is also up, and we are fourth globally on YouTube when it comes to rugby competitions, and that includes the NRL.
“What it shows is there are more eyeballs on the URC and as a result of that more eyeballs on our clubs and individual brands.
“Our database provides a good barometer of how many people are engaging. We’ve gone into it in depth and have found that it is up 116 percent from when we started the URC (from the PRO14).
“There has been a year on year rise and last year’s 34.9 million accumulative audience has already been surpassed and that is before we’ve even seen the figures from round 18.
“There has been growth right across the competition and across the territories. We are on Sky Italy for the first time in a while and that is going well for us, with the Italians obviously enjoying Benetton’s success.”
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