History was made as the overall attendance record for a single round in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship was broken in round 11 with over 123,000 fans packing into stadiums across both hemispheres.
The total of 123,307 surpassed the previous record of 121,177 as sell-out crowds and season-high attendances were reported in Belfast, Cardiff, Dublin, Durban, Edinburgh and Parma.
Both the 1872 Cup game between Edinburgh and the Glasgow Warriors in Scotland and the Cell C Sharks versus Vodacom Bulls fixture drew in crowds of 25,000 while games in Dublin (17,560), Belfast (16,672) and Cape Town (15,001) all drew attendances of over 15,000.
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It caps an impressive two-week period for the URC with nearly a quarter of a million fans attending the Christmas and New Year derby games. Of those 16 fixtures, there were three sell-outs and a total of nine season-high attendances.
Underscoring the impressive achievement, URC CEO Martin Anayi said: “To break the overall attendance record for a single round in the league’s history is yet another boost for the United Rugby Championship. This comes just a week after the Christmas attendance was broken and again shows the superb work our clubs are doing to grow the game.
“To put this achievement in context, the previous record included a 62,000 crowd from Judgement Day in Cardiff in 2018, so to break it without hosting a major double-header is fantastic.
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“There was barely a spare seat in Ireland, the Cardiff Arms Park in Wales was full, Edinburgh did a terrific job to get so many into Murrayfield for the 1872 Cup game, while Zebre also had their biggest crowd of the season.
“In South Africa, the concept of playing over Christmas and New Year was very new to their market but fans have embraced ‘summer rugby’ with almost 100,000 attending over two weekends.
“Right now fans will have lots of demands on how they spend their money and to see so many choosing to buy tickets to support their teams in the URC is humbling.”
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Across rounds 10 and 11 of the URC close to a quarter of a million fans attended 16 games where the average attendance was 12,500. South Africa had the highest attendance by country with 95,538 fans attending the four derby matches in Cape Town and Durban.
This was followed by 65,873 in Ireland with one game apiece played in Belfast, Dublin, Galway and Limerick while in Wales there were two sell-outs and a season-high attendance (Ospreys) across Cardiff, Llanelli, Newport and Swansea among the 40,753 attendees.
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