SA dominate S15 TV numbers!

Tank

The top 20 most watch Super Rugby games in terms of TV numbers:

And how those numbers are split per country:

So all but two of the 20 most viewed games were hosted in SA …

And all but one of the 20 most viewed games included an SA side …

13 of the of the 20 most viewed games were SA derbies …

The Stormers were involved in 8 of the top 9 most viewed games …

The Stormers and Bulls were involved in 9 of the top 20 most viewed games …

New Zealand sides were involved in 6 of the top 20 most viewed games …

Australian sides were involved in just 3 of the top 20 most viewed games …

Remind us why we need the Aussies again?

Source:  All numbers and images courtesy of sport marketing giants RepucomSA, using numbers from TAMS and DSTVi. Follow them on Twitter – @repucominsights

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11 Comments

  1. And the only reason two Australian teams featured is because the played against SA teams.

  2. I’m sure I’ve raised this with you before, but the viewer figures don’t matter as much as the rights fees paid by Supersport, Fox and Sky (to Newscorp). Don’t you have any gossip or rumour as to what those might be? If they are even close to the proportion of their viewers then I would suggest SA withdraw from Super Rugby (definitely NOT the RC) in a heartbeat.

    Also, any idea of the numbers who watched in the rest of the world? Very small I’m sure, but I’m interested.

    1. Yep, you have … and you are right. So in effect, SuperSport get “Punished” for having the biggest TV numbers. Newscorp raise the money to buy the SANZAR TV rights from the likes of SuperSport …

      Sorry, but I do not have an idea of the kind of numbers that are being thrown around. One would hope that SANZAR then split that cash according to the audience, but I doubt that??

      1. Maybe we are talking at cross purposes here, but, after expenses, SANZAR split the money equally between SARU, ARU and NZRU. That much is in the public domain and it is perfectly fair that the cake is divided equally amongst three equal participants.

        What is not in the public domain is the size of that cake. The gross figure which was released was US$415Million over five years but that is actually the sum of the SANZAR deal and domestic deals. They say they lumped everything into one figure to compare like with like because previous SANZAR deals had included the domestic games, but really they did it to obscure the fact that the ARU has no domestic competition and the NZRU sell the ITM Cup (NPC) for much less than SARU sell the Currie Cup.

        An Australian blogger tried to analyse these figures just over two years ago.
        http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/all-that-glitters-is-not-gold-in-new-sanzar-deal/
        His conclusion was that with the Currie Cup being sold outside of SANZAR, SARU end up with much more TV income than the other two.

        That is why I believe that the work done by Andy Marinos et al during the negotiations was absolutely fantastic. Keeping all the Currie Cup money (along with Vodacom Cup, incoming tours etc etc) out of the SANZAR basket has benefitted SARU by approx US$60million over 5 years. Yet, he can’t brag about it because that will expose the “loss” experienced by the other two. Some people (Tony McKeever) have even suggested that Marinos lost us money by getting a 33% share instead of the 38% under the old deal. Tony doesn’t understand the figures.

        This has definitely been a big boost for SARU finances. They reported broadcast income of R273Million for 2011, compared to R181Million for 2010.

  4. Is this purely total veiwing numbers or has the number of people per country been taken into account?

    1. Total viewing numbers, and % per country is based on that total. Nothing to do with percentage of population …

  5. Um… Tank. Either you can’t count or the image you have shown at the top is wrong but I count 3 australian sides involved in the top 20 viewed games (Reds, Brumbies and Waratahs).
    It would be nice as well, Tank, is if you could also include the attendance at the stadiums for these games. Would make an interesting comparison.

    1. Sorry, that Reds game snuck in without me noticing. Have changed it in the post … I don’t have stadium attendance numbers I am afraid …

  6. Tank, should the time difference of these games not be taken into account. A +12 hour difference to New Zealand and +10 hour for Australia(Sydney) means they watch our home games (18 matched from your list) between 01h00am and 05h00am.

    The other two are NZ games and they have decent viewer numbers. Maybe to get a idea of viewership we should exclude SA games.

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