There was an article in one of the papers today about RU in the states. There are 450,000 registered union players there. Getting more popular again in colleges. No chance of it being a major professional sport but that doesn't matter as more people attend college games than pro ones. Rugby union for quite a long time was more popular than gridiron. But in the way of America they abandoned it after a thrashing by Australia to,concentrate on a sport where the "world champions" would always be an American team. The USA are the reigning Olympics Champions at rugby union though.
Them point is though that there is a World Cup and it didn't get a mention despite England playing this weekend. More people in the area covered by Radio Humberside will be interested in that game than the two Hull RL clubs, cricket, City, Scunthorpe or others that were discussed.mEngland.'s opening game was the most watched sporting event on TV so far this year so not mentioning it smacks of Gollum's prejudices shining through. It got a mention the other night with a different presenter.
I think it is a deliberate position on his part. I sent in a message about the RU World Cup and the game tomorrow just to see if it would be read out. Needless to say, it wasn't.
Well like you said about England v Fiji, the game tomorrow will be the most watched sporting event of the week.
Not cheap either, the bloke I go to City with is going to the Elland Road game tomorrow, he was going the England game, but the tickets he was offered were £315 each (face value). He's also got the option of semi-final and Final tickets, but he has to take four for each and they're £500 each and if wants to make sure he's at the England semi, he'd have to buy them for both semi-finals.
Average ticket price £100. Someone I know was offered tickets in the ballot for a game ar Elland Road for £60. Yet over 95% of tickets have been sold. As I have written previously, the RU has a good marketing team or there is more interest in .RU than the RL fraternity would care to admit. One notable fact is that they have sold tickets to people from 120 countries, which is far more than the number of countries which play the game. As I said, good marketing. Amusing how some journalists who constantly go on about high prices for football have been quiet about this or have tried to justify the high prices. These were needed because you have to pay the world body for the privilege of staging the World Cup, which cost the RFU something like £80million and then price it to recoup that plus call the other associated costs. Seems to work, 95% of tickets sold and no loss for the RFU. One shudders to think what would happen if you had to pay .FIFA (officially, not behind the scenes bungs) to stage a World Cup.
I think as a one off event its not really fair to compare the prices to football, especially given that RU is significantly cheaper week in week out. Any major tournament is bound to be expensive because they know people will pay it. The reason ticket prices are so high is that for some games up to 75% of tickets are kept for officials, sponsors, charities and partners, meaning very few tickets are actually put on sale.
Union is for toffs & they can afford it. Disgraceful how much going to a sporting event in this country is now.
The comparison is with one off events which the papers always criticise football prices for. Internationals at Twickenham are generally dearer than internationals at Wembley. It really does seem to bug you that a lot more people are prepared to pay more money to watch RU than RL. Do you think they will make back the £80million they paid for the rights to stage the tournament plus all the other costs by only selling 25% of the tickets? It isn't like the RL World Cup where they had to give tickets away for most games and even then only got meagre crowds for games not involving England.
I'm going to the Wales v Australia match at Twickenham with my son - £250/ticket Season for the Ospreys costs £190 !
Why do you associate yourself with Hull, and then repeatedly try and drag it down with bigoted ****e like that?
