Rugby: Room for improvement to Super 12

PERTH - A drop-off in crowd sizes for Super 12 rugby matches in New Zealand this year meant there was still plenty of room for innovation, according to administrators at the annual Sanzar conference in Perth.

The average crowd for the five New Zealand franchises in round-robin games was about 19,000, fractionally down on 1999.

New Zealand Rugby Football Union competition manager Cameron Harland said the figures were not a reason to panic because a number of factors, such as venues, affected crowd sizes.

Even though the Super 12 has been a success story in its five years, organisers are wary of it stagnating in a competitive sports and entertainment market.

Australia is a strong supporter of increasing the size of the competition, wanting another Australian franchise, a move opposed by New Zealand.

In New Zealand, an experimental scheduling move next year will see four Saturday matches kick off at 5.30 pm.

And the union will soon launch a new marketing campaign.

"We want to continue to be innovative and satisfy our consumers, and make sure the Super 12 stays super," said Harland, the New Zealand delegate on a Sanzar management advisory group.

"We want to create the hype around the competition. The franchises do their own job in terms of getting people into the ground and promoting their own team."

The best at this, Harland said, were the Hurricanes, who drew the largest average home crowd of 27,000 and filled their home ground by an average 94 per cent, topping the champion Canterbury Crusaders with 84 per cent.

"I think the Hurricanes do an outstanding job of marketing their team from a public relations point of view," Harland said.

"Just the way they run their business, the players they've got and how they play the game is all lumped in an impressive package."

The overall crowd percentage figures compared well with Australia and South Africa where teams play at bigger stadiums.

Television ratings in New Zealand remained stable.

- NZPA