Over
34 million fans tuned into the inaugural United Rugby Championship season as
the league set a number of major broadcast records in its first campaign.
With
records set for the season-long audience, Play-Off viewers and the URC Grand
Final itself, it is clear that the new 16-team league has caught the
imagination of rugby fans across the northern and southern hemispheres.
Despite
reducing the regular season to 18 rounds, the strong viewership numbers
produced across the UK, Ireland and South Africa prove that less is more.
In a further boost, Italy reported their largest audiences ever while
international rights coverage and the launch of the URC.tv streaming service
bolstered the global total.
In
its first season, the United Rugby Championship was supported by Free-to-Air
(FTA) broadcasters in the UK, Ireland and Italy – BBC Wales, BBC Northern
Ireland, Mediaset, RTÉ, S4C and TG4 and by leading Pay TV companies SuperSport
(South Africa) and Premier Sports (UK and Ireland).
This
mix of broadcast platforms allowed fans to enjoy rising standards of production
while the crossover and collaboration across different territories gave the
league a truly global feel.
Martin
Anayi, United Rugby Championship, CEO said: “We are blown
away by the broadcast audiences in the first season of the United Rugby Championship.
It is a tremendous credit to the standard of rugby displayed by our teams and players
and the superb work done by our broadcasters to showcase that talent.
“The URC offers a diversity in
playing styles and cultures across two hemispheres that is unique in club rugby
and we can see that fans in the north and south have been attracted to that.
With a mix of Free to Air and Pay TV coverage allied to our increased presence
in South Africa and record figures in Italy we have found a very effective
formula to grow interest in our league and the sport of rugby union.”
The
numbers behind the headlines are truly stellar and set a high benchmark for the
URC, its teams, players, broadcasters and partners to aim for ahead of the new
2022/23 season.
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE RECORD-BREAKING
AUDIENCES
Regular
Season
Thanks
to the consolidated reports from Nielsen Sports, one of the world’s leading
agencies in broadcast reporting, the United Rugby Championship can confirm that
the audience for the entire 2021/22 season reached a high mark of 34.6million
across 7,000-plus hours of coverage.
That
figure of 34.6m was an increase of 169% compared to the 2020/21
PRO14 and Rainbow Cup campaigns combined.
- The
cumulative average audience per game during the season was 230k which
represented a 109% increase on 20/21.
- A
cumulative audience of almost 3 million people tuned into Round 3 with
the figure of 2,892,000 setting a new record for the highest audience
for a single round in the league’s history.
- In
total, four rounds eclipsed an audience of 2 million, seven rounds drew
more than 1.5 million and 6 of the remaining 7 rounds all attracted a
minimum viewership of 1 million.
- The
average audience per round in the regular season was 1.7 million.
- The
cumulative audience from Italy was 1.6 million.
URC Grand Final and Play-Offs
The
first-ever United Rugby Championship Grand Final took place in Cape Town, South
Africa between the DHL Stormers and Vodacom Bulls and set a new TV milestone
for the league.
A
total of 1.25 million watched the DHL Stormers win their first URC title
and set a new record for the league decider. Although the Grand Final was an
all-South African affair 41% of the audience came from outside of the
territory with RTÉ’s live coverage in the Republic of Ireland accounting for 15%.
This
trend of interest was a hallmark of the entire URC Play-Offs which also set a
record for viewership with 3.8 million across seven games. The largest
viewership for the Play-Offs came in the DHL Stormers v Ulster Final
Four game where the audience hit 754k while the other Semi-Final
encounter between Leinster and the Vodacom Bulls drew 472k.
Including
the URC Grand Final, the average audience per game in the Play-Offs was 537k
Top
10 most watched regular season games in 2021/22
In
the Top 10 most watched games of the regular season, Munster featured
five times, the Cell C Sharks were involved in three with Ospreys, Ulster and
the DHL Stormers appeared twice.
The
most watched game in the regular season was Ospreys’ Round 3 game with Cell
C Sharks which was viewed by a combined audience of 581k on BBC
Wales, SuperSport and Premier Sports.
- R3
Ospreys v Cell C Sharks 580,026
- R3 Cardiff
v Vodacom Bulls 560,886
- R2 Munster
v DHL Stormers 538,909
- R6
Cell C Sharks v Scarlets 531,421
- R10 Munster
v Ulster 523,707
- R4 Munster
v Connacht 521,110
- R1 Munster
v Cell C Sharks 484,267
- R5 Ospreys
v Munster 480,652
- R4 Ulster
v Emirates Lions 468,993
- R4 Dragons
v DHL Stormers 445,471
Most
Watched Clubs
Helped
by their appearance in the URC Grand Final, the DHL Stormers were the
most viewed team in the league with their total audience coming in at over 7.2million.
The URC champions are followed by the Vodacom Bulls, Munster, Cell C Sharks
and Leinster for audiences across the entire season.
The DHL
Stormers and Munster were the most watched teams in South Africa and
Ireland, respectively with Ospreys leading the interest in Wales, Benetton
were No 1 in Italy and Edinburgh topped the pile in Scotland.
Derby
matches which are at the heart of the tribal rivalries in the URC also
performed well with only one South African fixture breaking the dominance of
the all-Irish clashes.
Top
5 Derby Audiences
The
most watched derby games of the season all took place in Ireland, with
Munster’s R10 clash with Ulster drawing in 523k in a game that was also No 5 in
the list of Top 10 most watched in the regular season. Munster also feature in
four of the Top 5 derby audiences.
- R10
Munster v Ulster 523,707
- R4 Munster
v Connacht 521,110
- R16 Ulster
v Munster 428,709
- R15 Munster
v Leinster 402,534
- R6 Leinster
v Ulster 401,603
Top
5 Games from South Africa
- R6
Cell C Sharks v Scarlets 531,421
- R17
DHL Stormers v Leinster 417,323
- R7
Emirates Lions v Munster 394,416
- R16
Cell C Sharks v Leinster 361,290
- R17
Vodacom Bulls v Glasgow Warriors 323,386
Top
5 Games from Ireland
- R2 Munster
v DHL Stormers 538,909
- R10 Munster
v Ulster 523,707
- R4 Munster
v Connacht 521,110
- R1 Munster
v Cell C Sharks 484,267
- R4 Ulster
v Emirates Lions 468,993
Top
5 Games from Italy
- R11 Zebre
v Munster 439,701
- R1 Zebre
v Emirates Lions 295,647
- R1 Benetton
v DHL Stormers 213,754
- R10 Benetton
v Cell C Sharks 202,283
- R4 Benetton
v Ospreys 196,817
Top
5 Games from Scotland
- R3 Edinburgh
v DHL Stormers 382,185
- R3 Glasgow
Warriors v Emirates Lions 363,674
- R4 Edinburgh
v Vodacom Bulls 260,448
- R5 Glasgow
Warriors v Leinster 224,494
- R2 Glasgow
Warriors v Cell C Sharks 209,027
Top
5 Games from Wales
- R3 Ospreys
v Cell C Sharks 580,026
- R3 Cardiff
v Vodacom Bulls 560,886
- R5 Ospreys
v Munster 480,652
- R4 Dragons
v DHL Stormers 445,471
- R3 Scarlets
v Munster 330,313