Popularity
As a team sport rugby union is a distant third in the popularity ratings behind baseball and football, and this reality is unlikely to change until Japan's national rugby union team becomes consistently successful on the world stage, especially at the Rugby World Cup.
At present rugby union is rarely seen on the terrestrial TV channels, and is mainly restricted to CS and cable subscription channels, which hinders its growth. (Sometimes the bigger games are shown on NHK TV - e.g. the University championship rugby final and the Microsoft Cup.)
Read more about this topic: Rugby Union In Japan
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)