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It has been just 6 days since the 2015 Rugby World Cup kicked off in England, but the World event has broken all the previous records recorded in terms of viewership, tickets sold, television audience, commercial revenue or social media activity.
The record for the tickets sold was broken even before the World Cup began, with more tickets being sold than the France World Cup in 2007. A new attendance record was made at London’s Wembley Stadium which had an attendance of 89,019 for the New Zealand against Argentina clash. As of Wednesday night, ticket sales were still climbing, with 2.35 million having been bought, 100,000 more than eight years ago.
“We always felt it had the potential to be the biggest”
The chief executive of World Rugby, Brett Gosper was delighted with the response the World Cup is getting in the outside world and said, “Everywhere you look, it is thumping through records at a vast rate. We always felt it had the potential to be the biggest. I guess we’d now be saying it is. It is probably exceeding expectations in terms of demand and the way the script is playing out,” as The Telegraph reports.
The commercial revenues have also seen a massive rise of about 60% from the previous World Cup, with World Rugby expecting the revenues to cross the 240 million mark by the end of the tournament. Out of those 240 million, around 150 million will come from the television rights from the 205 territories in which the World Cup is broadcasted, a 15% increase from the 2011 World Cup.
“It’s got off to what everyone would agree is the dream start”
As per the numbers given by ITV, around 3.2 million people watched the opening eight games of the 2015 World Cup, which is 1 million more than the 2011 edition and had seen a increase of 2.4 million from the 2007 World Cup.
Brett Gosper added, “Certainly, it’s got off to what everyone would agree is the dream start. I think JK Rowling was following the Japanese game and posted on Twitter, “You couldn’t write this”. If she says that, that’s a pretty good accolade.”
However, it is the social media coverage that had the maximum increase from the previous editions of Rugby World Cup’s as the opening ceremony and first match getting more mentions than all of the six weeks of the tournament in 2011. According to social media monitoring firm Brandwatch, there have been almost two million Rugby World Cup-related mentions on Twitter since the opening match, nearly 10 times as many as the 236,000 tweets about the last tournament four years ago.
With more than 5 weeks to go in the multi-nation tournament, it is expected to break many more records on the way.
