\n<\/p>\n
More eyes are on women’s rugby than ever before.<\/b><\/p>\n
Following a highly successful Rugby World Cup last year, supporter numbers in the UK climbed from 7.94m pre-existing fans of women’s rugby to 13.21m, according to research commissioned by BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
England’s victory over Canada in September’s final took place in front of 81,885 fans at Allianz Stadium – a record for a women’s rugby match and the second-highest attendance for a men’s or women’s World Cup final.<\/p>\n
It was the most-watched women’s rugby match on UK television, with a record-breaking peak audience of 5.8m viewers. It also beat both the Six Nations and the British and Irish Lions’ winning tour of Australia to become the most-watched rugby match of last year.<\/p>\n
Rugby union was the second most-watched women’s sport in 2025, so with momentum at an all-time high, this year’s Women’s Six Nations is set to be comfortably the biggest yet in terms of crowd numbers.<\/p>\n
Pre-tournament demand has already broken records, with all four home nations staging fixtures at their national stadiums.<\/p>\n
The record crowd for a Women’s Six Nations game is 58,498 for the Grand Slam decider between England and France in 2023.<\/p>\n
That record is set to fall, with more than 75,000 tickets sold for England’s opener against Ireland at Allianz Stadium on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“There is probably a line of thinking that audiences will just keep growing, but they are actually hard to maintain,” Rugby Football Union director of women’s rugby Alex Teasdale told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“The role of the Red Roses as ambassadors has helped sustain some of that strong buy-in, and the fans have had a brilliant time.<\/p>\n
“It has been really pleasing to see, but anyone involved in women’s sport knows it is not a given.<\/p>\n
“You have to work hard to give fans a brilliant experience so they want to keep coming back.”<\/p>\n
Scotland will play their first Women’s Six Nations match in front of fans at Murrayfield when they host England next weekend.<\/p>\n
Scotland women’s record home attendance of 7,774 was set at Hive Stadium in 2024, but more than 25,000 tickets have been sold for the fixture.<\/p>\n
The expected record crowd will be the biggest for a standalone women’s sporting event in Scotland.<\/p>\n
Ireland’s game against Scotland on the final weekend will be their first at the 51,711-capacity Aviva Stadium and their record home attendance of 7,754 is set to be smashed, with more than 16,000 tickets already reported to have been sold.<\/p>\n
Wales, who play Scotland at Principality Stadium on the opening weekend, are aiming to better last year’s record crowd of 21,186 for a Wales women’s team event on home soil.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, France will host England at the 42,115-capacity Stade Atlantique in Bordeaux in the final round, where they will hope to have a full house for a possible Grand Slam decider.<\/p>\n
But will the entertainment on the pitch match the clamour for tickets?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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More eyes are on women’s rugby than ever before. Following a highly successful Rugby World Cup last year, supporter numbers in the UK climbed from 7.94m pre-existing fans of women’s rugby to 13.21m, according to research commissioned by BBC Sport. England’s victory over Canada in September’s final took place in front of 81,885 fans at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}