United Rugby Championship (URC) chief executive Martin Anayi has credited the South African teams in the competition for the incredible growth of the event.
Anayi said that the addition of the four top SA franchises as the competition transitioned from the PRO14 to the URC had worked across every level.
He was impressed with the professional approach adopted by South Africans in marketing the competition and the sport, describing Stormers coach John Dobson as the archetype of what a rugby person should be.
“In many ways, the South Africans have taught us about professionalism and how to be professional, the game has been run along professional lines for longer there,” he said.
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Breaking records
This year’s URC has already broken most of the previous records even though the season is not yet over and is only this week heading into the play-offs.
This past weekend’s final round of the 16-team and 18-round competition featuring teams from SA, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Italy saw as many as 11 teams still in the hunt for playoff places at the start of it. The 11th-placed team at the start of the weekend, the Ospreys from Wales, defied the odds by sneaking into the playoffs courtesy of their win in the final match of a pulsating weekend in Cardiff.
It meant that for the first time since the Pro14 morphed into the URC with the addition of the four top SA franchises in 2021 all five nations participating in the unique cross-hemisphere competition will be part of the play-offs.
Teams from four nations have qualified for next season’s Champions Cup, with the cut-off point moved to seven teams when the Sharks, out of the running to qualify through the URC, qualified through the EPCR Challenge Cup.
“It has become a proper pan country competition and we are most proud of that, it is great to see teams from all our different nations making the playoffs,” said Anayi in a media round table at the start of the buildup week to this weekend’s start of the finals series.
“We haven’t had that in the previous two seasons. It tells us that the competition is working. We want jeopardy throughout the league. It was a really close run in, it went down to the last game, and to get a Welsh qualifier and Benetton getting in from Italy was great and it shows us we have a strong league. It is not just at the top end but also in the deeper reaches of the league that it is strong.”
Obviously while South Africans will have been disappointed that the Lions didn’t sneak into the playoffs, as they were poised to do until the Ospreys managed their bonus point win in the Welsh derby, it works for the URC to have Welsh and Italian teams involved at the sharp end from a television audience perspective.
When it comes to that, and other aspects of the URC from an audience and engagement perspective, the 2023/24 season was another groundbreaking one.
“We have been tracking up on the metrics and breaking things down territory by territory, focusing on audience growth across social media, broadcast and ultimately bums on seats. Those are the key metrics. We have been working super hard with the clubs to show growth and healthy competition and it appears to be working,” he said.
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