Popularity
There are over 27,000 registered rugby union players in Spain, with more than 220 clubs across the country. Participation rates for rugby union jumped by 20% in the Madrid area during the two years following the national team's participation in their first ever Rugby World Cup in 1999. In addition, funding from the Spanish sports council has also been on the rise. Rugby union gets minimal media coverage, however, compared to more popular team sports such as association football (soccer) and basketball.
There are pockets where rugby is particularly popular, such as Valladolid, a city located in north-central Spain, Sant Boi de Llobregat in Catalonia and the Basque country. The rugby club Biarritz Olympique, who come from the French Basque Country have played Heineken Cup matches at the 32,000-seat Estadio Anoeta in San Sebastián, Spain and attracted sell-out crowds.
Read more about this topic: Rugby Union In Spain
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“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)
“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)