'Some people DON'T like FACTS' | Super Rugby CEO reveals TRUTH about Audience Numbers
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What negative perceptions exist about Super Rugby attendance?
I know people don't necessarily like facts and they like to paint a negative picture about it. But, you know, that's the story. That's the truth.
What about the Australian clubs, the Australian franchise sides? Their attendance is in ground.
If I had to answer the question, Jack, would you want to take it back to Christchurch? Absolutely.
Welcome to the DSPN. John Walker wins the 1500 metres gold medal at the Olympic Games. The Olympics have won.
The Devlin Sports Podcast Network.
DSPN, welcome to it again. Click the subscribe button for us, please, if you will, on YouTube channel. It always helps. And if you want to be part of Changing Sheds every Friday, it's a pay-per-view model. A couple of bucks a week to support us. And we put a whole lot of extra content out for you on a Friday. Text DSPN to 3598. We spoke with Jack Mesley, CEO of Super Rugby, at the very start. Way back in February, the launch of this competition. Here we are, heading into the qualifying finals. Time to reconvene and catch up again. Welcome back to the show, mate.
Thanks, mate. Thanks for having me.
A lot of questions here for you, but let's just look first and foremost at what we're facing this weekend. Are you happy with the way that the competition has gone this year? And define happy, what makes you happy about it?
I mean, I think in a number of ways, I'm really happy. When we sat down at the start of the year, we wanted to achieve a few things and largely those things have come to fruition. A couple of those things were we wanted to continue to see improvement in our shape of game. uh in terms of you know the quality of the rugby played on the field and how entertaining that is for fans and we see some really good moves in that um we've seen a reduction in dead time by about three minutes the law innovations we've put in play have helped generate that and also brought some interest into it we're seeing still a high number of tries but with some really exciting rugby so from a shape of game point of view we're really happy with the direction of that
Off the field, our number one focus was all about crowds and bums on seats, which we know we've seen some growth, some small growth over the last couple of years, and we wanted to continue on that growth. And we've seen that play out, and all five New Zealand clubs are going to post some really pleasing attendance results this season, showing good double-digit growth in New Zealand, which we're really happy with. So, you know, obviously that's Christchurch are doing. There's wonderful things going on in Christchurch, but we're also seeing really good growth in Auckland with the Blues, in Wellington with the Canes, the Highlanders and the Chiefs as well. In that space, we're really pleased. One of the other big initiatives that we had was SuperRound.
We wanted to get SuperRound back in the calendar and deliver a great event, and clearly we did that. So, yeah, in a number of ways, really, really pleased with how the season's gone and excited to be at this point now with some great finals ahead of us.
I'd like a couple of things because I want to come back to Super Round especially. Just in terms of the crowds, in any debate that's going on, and you, I'm sure, are well aware of this as well, anything that is brought up negatively about Super Rugby, inevitably it comes out back to bums on seats, crowds, cameras at grounds, are enough people actually going along? So how are you measuring that in terms of actual numbers in New Zealand? Do you have any numbers for us in terms of this was what it was like this year, this is how many bums on seats we've had this year?
It's really simple. We measure how many times those turnstiles tick over and we see if we're growing. And we are. As I said, across New Zealand, the five clubs have grown at greater than 10%. I don't have the specific numbers as in what they were to what they are in front of me here today. But that's the facts. And those clubs have done really, really well. And off the back of a hell of a lot of work uh on getting focused on that and i understand the argument i think people people kind of say well yeah we're still not full um and and they would be right and and other people go yeah but we're not where we were 20 years ago on super and and yeah maybe that's fair maybe that's fair enough but all we can do is focus on year on year on year on improving things and that's what we're doing and things are improving and if we continue to
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What negative perceptions exist about Super Rugby attendance?
0:00–4:53
2
What attendance growth statistics are reported for New Zealand clubs?
4:53–9:12
3
How does Super Rugby compare to the Warriors in TV ratings?
9:12–14:00
4
What are the key initiatives for Super Round this year?
14:00–19:54
5
How does government funding impact Super Rugby events?
19:54–25:42
6
What challenges do Australian clubs face in attendance?
25:42–31:23
7
What strategies are in place to engage younger audiences?
31:23–31:30
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from DSPN -RUGBY
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