One million to attend Heineken Cup

Not the Munster ones. We don't do polo. Newly crowned Magners League champions - as of last night - and the current Heineken Cup Champions take on last year's Magners League Champions, Leinster, in a H Cup semi-final derby match tomorrow for what will be the highest attendance ever for a rugby union club match. And an Irish TV audience that's estimated to be reach a million viewers between homes and pubs/clubs around the country.

and watching polo

Brad, you forgot to mention that union fans are also likely to be away on high powered business trips and their wives attending poetry reading and coffee gatherings when the games are on.

rugby union is way more popular and richer than league. you would have to be a drug addict to even consider that league could ever compete with union. compare RWC attendance and viewers vs RLWC. Compare catalan dragons vs Perpignan, Toulon, Toulouse, Stade...compare super league vs magners league, top 14 and GP. Remember the union fan has choice plus the union fan is also inclined to go and see the opera, theatre and holiday in france over the weekends.

The 6 nations is on the B list, the Challenge Cup final is on the A list. The 2 cannot be compared in any meaningful way.

Steffy Both the RL Challenge Cup and the 6N's are on the A list of national events that must be shown on FTA, therefore the comparison is not ridiculous. As you know this list is under review and it is possible that both the RL Challenge Cup and the 6N's might be removed from this list to allow the sattelite operators the chance to bid. I saw a recent survey in one of the nationals, I think the Guardian, which indicated that the RL Challenge Cup was top of the list followed by the 6N's for removal. Yes Sale games and U20 internationals are sometimes shown, but the move by RL to the summer is obviously an attempt to bring the game to more people and Friday nights is a clever marketing ploy as it is a well established regular feature. The problem with union coverage on Sky is that is it not at a regular time and the day of transmission keeps changing, which is not ideal. Probably because of the obvious demands of football which generally take precedent on timings. I am also intrigued why Sky is so keen to pump so much money into union. Last weekend they had coverage at all the games in the GP at the same time, so they could track the outcome for the teams progressing to the semis of the playoffs;not an inexpensive operation. I was at the Quins game but my brother in Huddersfield watched the coverage and said it was excellent and exciting as the outcome was in a abeyance until the end of coverage. It would be interesting to see the geographical spread of their coverage and possibly a demographic breakdown, they obviously see union as an area of potential to sell more subscriptions. Finally the numbers for the HC could have been higher as the Quins decided to turn down the Twickenham option to play at the Stoop. As a STH I agreed with the move as the home advantage was more important than a 50000 crowd or so at Twickenham. Leinster were not so happy as they probably would have had 25/30,000 supporters at Twickenham. However in the past as we know the outcome, close exciting game and 3500 Leinster fans were great, loud, noisy and a good craic was had by all. Incidently, the semi between Leinster and Munster at Croke Park was sold out within a couple of days with a ground capacity of 82500, just beating last year GP final at Twickenham. I don't know the gate for the Millenium between Cardiff's game but I supect it will be a probable full house. As an aside, it will also be interesting to see how these gates compare to RL's magical weekend in Edinburgh.

The Guinness Premiership is occasionally shown on a Friday evening on Sky (sometimes at the same time as Rugby League on Sky) - let's just say that the Guinness Premiership doesn't rate all that well then either. Your comparison of the Challenge Cup with the 6 Nations is ridiculous.

Just a thought on viewing figures. The RL super league is normally shown on Friday evenings on Sky where it enjoys a virtual solus postion, whereas the HC and the main GP games are shown on Saturdays and Sundays in direct competition with the EPL and other football comps. A more valid comparison might be on FTA where the RL Challenge Cup Final attracts circa 1.8M viewers whereas the 6N's will attract between 5/7M, in spite of direct competition with football on the sattelite channels, whereas RL Challenge Cup being in summer has no competition otherthan cricket. Sky have increased their investment in RU, because presumably they see it as a way of upping their subscriptions. They would dearly love to capture the 6Ns but that is barred as is the RWC. Without going into a detailed analysis about socio-economics, there is a school of thought that RL in its fanbase is closer to football in culture and therefore they buy the subscriptions. Whereas the union fan probably itsn't too interested in football and has no subscription hence the drive by Sky to capture more of the union fans.

The ESPN Heineken Cup broadcasts are pretty hillarious. They're introduced by this American guy who clearly doesn't know what he's talking about but is trying his hardest to be enthusiastic. Then at kick off it takes the commentary feed from what I assume is the Setanta broadcast. We've got the Rugby Channel here as well and it plays quite a bit of European rugby including HC and 6N. Looks like more people in the UK are watching league on TV than rugby, and that premiership darts is pretty close to their hearts as well. All of this is news to me - but I guess I never read the european league press so I wouldn't know. Gort's puts alot of time and work into this, no doubt he'll set us right if we ever get too big for our boots.

Ok. Thanks. I'm bored with this topic now.

I don't think they pay a huge amount for the HC given the number of games they show - up to 8 a weekend I think. The GP rates less than the HC yet gets more money from Sky and is often just one game a weekend.

Yeah, but are they delivering the viewing numbers for advertisers? I can't figure how they're paying for the H Cup rights with those - no other word for it - shite figures.

Sky is Pay TV. They try to maximise the number of people watching in order to sell more Sky Sports packages and sell the advertising slots at a higher rate. Sky heavily advertise their rugby union coverage across their other channels and in other media outlets.

I accept all the usual hyperbole of organisations and media acolytes, Steffy. It's just that the figures seem so low in comparison to viewing figures in Ireland, yet you've got 15 times the population, and the biggest rugby playing population in the world. Presumably, Sky must be artificially restricting the potential viewing population in UK as well - considerably. Seems crazy, but hey they're making money - somehow.

pothale, the actual figures are often very different to the perceived figures. For example the IRB regularly tell anybody who will listen that the world cup is watched by over 4 billion people (they occasionaly include the word "cumulative") - total nonsense of course but they put out the press releases and the figures get published and a lot of people believe them. By the same token the journalists who report on the HC and the GP usually hype them - for example I have read that the HC is played "across europe" or is played in stadiums "all over europe" - the fact is that only a fraction of europe is involved. The way the papers carry on you'd think the whole population of the UK is fascinated by the HC and the GP - the reality is very different.

Steffy - I'm stunned at the UK viewing figures for GP and HC. Didn't realise they were that low.

Keith - I don't live in UK so not familiar with what people prefer - though it would appear that a) people prefer GP games and b) despite Sky's best endeavours they can't beat the appeal of FTA transmissions by BBC - people just ain't willing to pay when there's a good public service broadcaster in situ. Where I live in Ireland, it's a similar situation. RTE is the public service broadcaster and does extremely good sports coverage from a relatively low budget. BBC own the rights to 6 Nations, and have an arrangement with domestic broadcasters, so that every transmission can be domesticated with panellists and commentators. RTE was able to get a derogation on most soccer games featuring the Republic of Ireland team (as opposed to Northern Ireland), so that it was able to transmit at the same time as Sky. It got great viewing figures again. However, when Sky decided to turn the screw on the ERC on the Heineken Cup and despite RTE having a much better panel and commentating team, the competition was lost. Stupid, and I figure Munster should have enough clout through IRFU to be able to see if the situation can change next time rights come up for grabs. Re your query on ESPN deal. Sky grants transmission or re-transmission rights in a number of territories to different broadcasters. One of those is Setanta. Setanta is an Irish satellite broadcaster set up by two fellas who wanted to watch a Holland vs Ireland WC soccer match in London. They persuaded the foreign broadcaster to send them a feed. They got in contact with a guy I know who owned a satellite in Dublin for re-broadcast to a pub in London and then they went out selling tickets. It was a roaring success. That's how they got started - with the Irish ex-pat community. They're a bit bigger than that now. Australia and US were the next logical stops to promote Irish-based games across GAA, rugby and soccer - they have the exclusive rights to Magners League whilst Sky have the GP. They have soccer, rugby, cricket, basketball now with a number of re-broascast deals in place. I think they have a R/B deal with Sky and BBC in the US - so you can go to a bar (generally Irish) and watch H Cup games and 6 Nations games. Maybe ESPN got the deal on H Cup for Oz though I thought Setanta offered it as well.

Keith, the Challenge Cup features teams from all strata of rugby league in England, France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Russia. The low attendances you saw are from semi-pro teams. The HC games generally rate better than the GP games on Sky. The most recent available figures for the HC (we 12 Apr) - I assume the 1/4 finals - show ratings of 213,000; 172,000 and 121,000 (the first 2 are higher than the GP games the weekend before - the GP often rates at less than 100,000). Super League games that weekend rated at 270,000 and 230,000

Didn;t know that Steffy. I'm a bit ignorant about the challenge cup so I looked it on Wikipedia - hope there were alot of people watching at home because not many showed up at the grounds. Five of those games didn't attract more than 1000 people through the gate. One of them got fewer than 500 people! Pothale, not great numbers watching the 2007 HC final on TV in the UK compared to your average GP match. Do they generally rate the GP over the HC in England, or is it that most English supporters wouldn't care about an HC final if their club wasn't in it? By the way, good point about the lost TV audience in Ireland now that Sky own the rights. That needs to be fixed. Wonder what the number is when you add viewers from France. We get it live on ESPN down here, wonder how they do?

James, whats going on? First week our team fires and first week you don't write an article about them?