Rugby League in England - Popularity

Popularity

Rugby league is one of a number of sports vying for (distant) second place to Association football in the nation's affection. The MORI Sports Tracker consistently reports that rugby league interests around 15% of British adults. It was the fourth most popular team sport in the February 2005 list behind football, cricket and rugby union; 12% of British adults watched it regularly.

Rugby league is extremely popular in its "heartland" and, in those areas, interest in the sport rivals that of soccer. Many large towns with rugby league traditions do not have football teams as a result of the monopoly on local interest: for example, St Helens, Whitehaven, Warrington, Keighley, Castleford, Dewsbury, Batley and, until recently, Wakefield. It is striking how interest in rugby league can be very widespread in such towns whilst towns just a few miles away might have hardly any fans of the sport.

The regions in which rugby league is played most are West Cumbria, where the amateur version has a high participation rate; south Lancashire outside the cities of Liverpool and Manchester; West Yorkshire and the city of Hull. The sport is present in South Yorkshire and in York, but on a much smaller scale; it has little presence in the North East or the largely rural county of North Yorkshire. Many of the professional and semi-professional teams are connected by the M62 motorway and so the term "M62 corridor" is sometimes used, often in a derogatory manner, to refer to the area where rugby league is most popular. A 1994 survey revealed that sixty percent of people regularly attending rugby league lived in only four postal districts along the M62.

Rugby league is considered by most English people to be a regional sport, which perhaps prevents rugby league making further inroads into the English psyche in the South, and those cities which already thrive on soccer, and to a lesser extent, cricket and rugby union. Neither is it played in as great numbers elsewhere in England, although semi-professional and amateur clubs do exist in the lower national leagues and conference leagues and there is significant schools participation in London.

Fifty per cent of viewers who watch rugby league on Sky Sports live in the South of England. Over 40% of active rugby league supporters are female. At the beginning of the 2006 season there were between thirty and forty female-only rugby league clubs running in England, not including clubs that have teams of both sexes. The majority of these clubs are located in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Perhaps because of its regional character, rugby league as a whole has a lower participation rate compared to the other three major sports in England. Rugby league has for much of its history been banned in the armed forces and in many schools and universities, further stifling growth. These barriers have largely been dismantled in the past ten years due to professionalisation of the rival code of rugby union.

In 2004 the Rugby Football League reported 62,463 registered players (this is a UK-wide figure). However in 2008, the RFL noted that there were only 2,000 registered club players aged 30 or over. In contrast, with centralisation and streamlining efforts in regard to the governance of the sport throughout the UK since 2004, the inclusion of Rugby League players from the British Amateur Rugby League Association, the Rugby League Conference, plus the Student Rugby League and the Military Rugby League, the Rugby Football League as at 2011, now reports a player registration rate nearing 300,000. This figure rivals the participation rate for the code in Australia.

The 2006 Super League generated the highest weekly average attendance in the 11-year history of the competition. The average weekly attendance for the regular season stood at 9,026, generated by an aggregate attendance of 1,516,342 supporters. This is an increase on the 2005 season average of 8,887. The attendances are not evenly spread between clubs within Super League; whilst the best supported team, Leeds Rhinos with average gates of 15,683, a couple of clubs failed to attract averages of above 5,000. Crowds at matches below the top flight can exceed 3,500, however most of the clubs in this division have attendances lower than this.

Although attendances outside Super League can be quite low, many of the teams play in small towns and the attendance figures represent a large percentage of the local population.

Read more about this topic:  Rugby League In England

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