The 2015 Rugby World Cup has seen some enthralling on-field action.
Canadians have been able to watch all of it – and they’ve turned out in droves.
The most recent round, the semi-finals, drew a quarter of a million viewers for each game. Sunday’s Argentina vs. Australia semi actually out-drew Friday night’s Argos vs. Alouettes CFL matchup, while the Saturday semi between New Zealand and South Africa came up just behind.
The quarterfinal round was around 200,000, with the final round of pool games slightly above those numbers.
That’s nothing to sniff at.
“We’re very pleased with the results,” TSN vice-president of programming Shawn Redmond told The Province on Friday. “In all, 6 million Canadians have tuned in at one point or another.”
“It validates that rugby has Canadian interest,” he said, while noting that the number were high even for non-Canadian games.
There’s a strong base of interest there, one that rugby’s organizers would be apt to take notice of. TSN’s relationship with Rugby Canada has been a going thing for several years now – that so many Canadians are tuning in in 2015 is evidence to why.
“The match ups have been compelling, especially in these last two rounds,” The Sport Market’s Tom Mayenknecht said.
“They’ve also dedicated significant promotional weight to their rugby programming. Even with the early telecasts it’s been “appointment television” for rugby fans on TSN.”
The focus on filling in the entire narrative of the tournament is paying huge dividends, agreed Redmond. The five-channel platform is a big catalyst to the interest, something that’s been seen in the network’s coverage of tournaments in other sports, from the World Junior Championship in hockey, to basketball’s March Madness and the tennis Grand Slams.
“Our new strategy is about depth and breadth,” he said. “We’ve seen that with the Rugby World Cup.”
The number of people who have said to both your author “I’m not really sure what’s going on but I’m really enjoying it and I’m going to keep watching” has been notable. It’s something Redmond said he’d heard as well.
“World Rugby’s production was so good,” he said. “Think about the HD presentation. The camera angles. The miked-up ref. The farther you can go inside the game it’s more appealing for the audience.”
“It’s a good lesson, that type of access,” he said. It gives fans a chance to understand more intimately what is going on. It’s something TSN has seen in curling too, where the players are miked up during their games. Strategy is on the table, in real time.
“That makes it so much more interesting,” he said.
The big challenge for Canada’s rugby leaders will be how to find their own route to opening up their game to interested, if slightly lost, Canadians.
As for future presentation of rugby on TSN, between RWCs, Redmond said he could only say, for now, “we believe in the sport.”
SEVENS IMPACT:
Canada Sevens organizers report that ticket sales remain steady and that each RWC match day has seen an uptick in those sales. Almost 15,000 tickets have now been sold for each day of next March’s event at BC Place. That’s on pace to hit the target of 20,000 set when the event was first announced.
CEO Bill Cooper told The Province that less than 5% of reserved seating was left. He expects that when single-day tickets go on sale November 17, only general admission seating will be left.
pjohnston@theprovince.com
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