Attendance

[Dai Perk]

Good evening, my friends,

Watching the replay of Edinburgh v Southern Kings... there may be more fans gathered around my iPad than there are in the stadium, and my wife just went to bed.

Listening to the great "Rugby 365" podcast, I've learned a lot about the financial difficulties for South African clubs, but my word, how on earth can a nation so obsessed with the game completely fail to support their local clubs? Embarrassing!

Anyway, just curious if there's something I'm missing. Shocked to see my beloved Edinburgh team lose to a team with like 13 fans. Bizarre.

Thanks as always,

Dave

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

I think it is fair to say that:

a) attendances in some Tier 1 nations (mainly SA & Oz) have been dropping in recent years
b) that the Pro14 hasn't yet made the impact in SA that we'd been hoping for

The Kings got an attendance of 20,000+ plus for a derby game in Super Rugby 2 years ago (hosting the Sharks I think at a time when the Kings could have made the playoffs). So the fans are there, they are just not engaging with the competition at all.

The Cheetahs situation isn't much better and SA fans point out that Bloemfontein isn't that big a city and Cheetahs fans are distributed across a huge geographic area.

 

[Dai Perk]

Amazing to picture 20,000 fans at that stadium, must have been a great day... yesterday, it legitimately looked like 7 or 8 people were walking past and thought, "Oh look, seats, maybe we'll sit down for a spell."

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

Ah, the 20,000+ were at the large Nelson Mandela Bay stadium. There were fans at game, check out the fun scenes at the winning score in the link below.

They were just all sitting away in corner. Presumably to keep out of the sun.