The Stormers were the most watched team in the 2021/22 URC season. Picture: Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images
More than 34 million television and streaming viewers tuned in to watch the first season of the United Rugby Championship in 2021/22.
This was announced by the organisers of the URC on Wednesday.
Here then are the numbers behind the record-breaking audiences:
The audience for the entire 2021/22 season reached a high mark of 34.6million across 7,000-plus hours of coverage.
That figure of 34.6m was an increase of 169% compared to the 2020/21 PRO14 and Rainbow Cup campaigns combined.
The first Grand Final took place in Cape Town, South Africa between the Stormers and Bulls and set a new TV milestone for the league.
A total of 1.25 million watched the Stormers win their first URC title and set a new record for the league decider. Although the Grand Final was an all-South African affair 41% of the audience came from outside of the territory with RTÉ’s live coverage in the Republic of Ireland accounting for 15%.
This trend of interest was a hallmark of the entire URC Play-Offs which also set a record for viewership with 3.8 million across seven games. The largest viewership for the Play-Offs came in the Stormers v Ulster Final Four game where the audience hit 754k while the other Semi-Final encounter between Leinster and the Bulls drew 472k.
Including the URC Grand Final, the average audience per game in the Play-Offs was 537k.
In the Top 10 most watched games of the regular season, Munster featured five times, the Sharks were involved in three with Ospreys, Ulster and the Stormers appeared twice.
The most watched game in the regular season was Ospreys’ Round 3 game with Sharks which was viewed by a combined audience of 581k on BBC Wales, SuperSport and Premier Sports.
Helped by their appearance in the URC Grand Final, the Stormers were the most viewed team in the league with their total audience coming in at over 7.2million. The URC champions are followed by the Bulls, Munster, Sharks and Leinster for audiences across the entire season.
The Stormers and Munster were the most watched teams in South Africa and Ireland, respectively with Ospreys leading the interest in Wales, Benetton were No 1 in Italy and Edinburgh topped the pile in Scotland.
Derby matches which are at the heart of the tribal rivalries in the URC also performed well with only one South African fixture breaking the dominance of the all-Irish clashes.
The most watched derby games of the season all took place in Ireland, with Munster’s R10 clash with Ulster drawing in 523k in a game that was also No 5 in the list of Top 10 most watched in the regular season. Munster also feature in four of the Top 5 derby audiences.
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