ronk wrote:wixfjord wrote:
Yep, and Dublin manage to do it many more times a year. There might be something we can learn from there.
If you reckon it's 'nonsense' then fair enough. But they're maximising their crowds for league games far more than we are. The head in the sand approach isn't useful imo.
We should be open enough admit that we're not capitalising enough on the opportunity at the minute and some tweaks might change that.
How many times a year to Dublin pull big crowds? I don’t know.
The Irish team fill Aviva 6 times a year (in years where there are 6 games). Leinster mostly fill Aviva twice a year + knockouts). There are 9 or 10 Pro 14 matches in RDS and 2 HC matches. There are away fixtures too (Dublin don’t travel much). It wasn’t that long ago that some AIL fixtures were drawing bigger crowds than Leinster. Leinster have grown a lot and possibly could be growing more, but I can’t really think of much they could be doing better given the constraints and the time frames.
Pro14 attendances are reasonable but not outstanding for the visiting sides that aren’t a big draw. And there is a lot of rugby to spread audiences over.
Dublin would have 30k+ in Croker at least 6/7 times a year. Now there's different context at play, most notably them being a summertime 'occasion' games and a much bigger sport, but again, it just shows the potential there that I don't think we're maximising.
We absolutely should be doing better. There has been no considerable consistent increase in gates despite our success. I can only imagine what would happen if we went through a sustained period of underachievement like Munster.
If we just say 'feck it we'll never have more than 15/16k average for the lesser league games and we don't mind there's usually tickets available for a Euro game' then that won't change.
The focus should be on growing the crowd consistently and improving the facilities to draw in more imo.
I honestly believe that the open nature of the RDS and the relative poor quality of the toilets/bars/corporate is a big issue when trying to attract new people in, particularly in winter. It's a great ground in a brilliant location that with a few updates could be amazing.
As I say a move to summer rugby would be enormously beneficial for us imo.
The corporate thing would be a huge money spinner also. I mean Leinster Rugby is tailor made for corporate entertainment!
