VIDEO: URC concern over plummeting Ellis Park attendance addressed

United Rugby Championship CEO Martin Anayi said he was ‘excited’ about the state of the competition ahead of the semifinals.

Leinster host defending champions Glasgow Warriors in Dublin, with the Lansdowne Road attendance expected to be ‘significantly’ closer to the 52,000 stadium capacity than last week’s 12,879 spectators that watched them dismiss the less attractive Scarlets in the quarterfinal.

Loftus Versfeld, where the Bulls are hosting the Sharks in Pretoria in the weekend’s other semifinal, is heading for a sell-out 50,000.

Anayi spoke about the most competitive season and suggested the ‘health’ of the competition has never been better.

He added that attendances are up 14 percent, with an average of just under 12,000 per game and “growing”.

The broadcast figures are improving every year since the URC’s inception, with over 150 million viewers since 2021.

The URC boss said the social media channels are up 24 percent year-on-year New and described the Loftus figures as “pretty special” and added that the South African audiences are gravitating to the URC.

TV deals through to 2029 were announced for the various territories earlier this year. Total earnings have supposedly shot up by 33 percent in the competition’s new guise, with another 15-16 percent bump predicted by 2027.

However, amongst all the growing numbers and metrics, there is one massive ‘outlier’.

Ellis Park. a 62,000-seater venue seldom gets more than a couple of thousand spectators through the turnstile every week.

(WATCH as URC CEO Martin Anayi chats to @king365ed about the organisation’s concern about plummeting attendance figures at Ellis Park…..)

Anayi said there was an ‘exception to the rule’ with 20,000 at a game, even though, because of the positioning of the television cameras, it did not appear to be as many.

* Those numbers could not be independently verified, with suggestions that some of the Johannesburg venue’s attendance metrics have been inflated.

The URC boss admitted there are “concerns’ about the Ellis Park spectator numbers.

“It [Ellis Park] is so different to the other three Loftus Versfeld, Kings Park and Cape Town stadium],” Anayi told @rugby365com.

He admitted one of the issues is the crime-riddled location of the Ellis Park precinct and other factors.

“It is an obvious outlier when compared to the other three [SA franchises].”

The URC boss said he was impressed with the Lions’ improved form, even though they finished outside the top 10, after missing out on the play-offs last year only on points differential.

“We are trying to separate the two things [attendance and performance],” he told @rugby365com.

“From a performance point of view, they are on the right track.

“We are definitely engaging with them to see how we get more people into the stadium.

“When they had 20,00-odd people in the stadium, you can’t see it on TV, because of the position of the cameras.

“Sometimes it looks worse than it is.

“It is an outlier, and we are engaging with them to see how we can improve that over time.”

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