IMG labelled “hugely influential” as TV and attendance figures in Super League see major boost

Super League has had a major boost after confirmation from Rugby League Commercial that both viewing figures and attendances are up based on the same time as last year.

At a presser hosted by the RFL and with Rugby League Commercial Managing Director Rhodri Jones details of the season’s performance so far were revealed.

Coming off the back of Rivals Round it was confirmed that the Good Friday Derby between St Helens and Wigan Warriors had the highest peak audience of the season, however, it couldn’t knock off the Leeds Rhinos and St Helens game from the week prior for the highest average audience of the year.

Boosted by those figures it was confirmed that the cumulative audience for the first six rounds of the year is up and whilst the RFL have an agreement with Sky Sports not to reveal official figures, there was confirmation that the figure is “well over 3 million”, a rise of around 15-20%.

Many fans feared that every game being broadcast live on TV would negatively impact attendance at matches but this hasn’t been the case. Average attendance has risen 4.1% from the same stage as in 2023 with attendance at just over 9,500 and a cumulative attendance of over 330,000 which marks a 1% increase.

This current weekend of Super League also sees a landmark event with Catalans versus St Helens broadcast live on BBC Three, the first time that the French side have ever been shown in Super League on terrestrial TV.

Super League headlining Sky’s ‘Big Weekend’

That Catalans and St Helens game also heads up what Sky Sports are branding as one of their ‘Big Weekend’ with the playoff semi-final rematch live on Sky Sports Main Event as well as BBC Three.

Jones pointed to that as a sign of a strong relationship with Sky Sports at present: “Catalans versus St Helens is part of one of their ‘Big Weekends’, the game sits primetime at 8:00pm on Saturday night in around football, tennis, and some of the other sport that they’ve got. So we’re part of that campaign.

“The conversations I’ve had with Sky is that they’re very pleased with how the first six weeks of the season have gone.”

Asked about the influence that IMG has had upon the current broadcasting deal and how much of the season’s success so far can be attributed to the marketing giants, Jones applauded them.

“IMG were hugely supportive and influential in the final position where we got to with Sky. So you can attribute a lot of Sky work down to the work that we did with IMG,” he revealed.

“Equally they have done the L’Equipe deal and the TV3 deal and international deals around the world as well. So if it wasn’t IMG, would it have been somebody else? Yeah, it would have been. But to answer your question directly, how much influence have they had purely from a broadcast perspective, they’ve been hugely supportive and influential in terms of giving us the platform that we’ve got to show the games off to as many people as we are doing at the moment.”

For more data on attendances across Super League this season we’ve also ranked the figures so far through Round Six highlighting which teams are boasting the best numbers.