Featured image credit: Caelan Doris/www.inpho.ie
The United Rugby Championship (URC) set a new single-game attendance record on Saturday as 80,468 watched the Leinster vs Munster derby clash at Dublin’s Croke Park.
The match, which Leinster won 26-12, comfortably surpassed the previous record of 68,262, which was set at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium for the Judgement Day Welsh double-header back in 2016.
The previous highest figure for an individual URC match was 56,344, which was set at the 2023 final in Cape Town as Munster beat the DHL Stormers. The previous regular-season high was 50,026, which was set earlier this year during the meeting between the Stormers and the Vodacom Bulls at Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld.
The last time Leinster and Munster met at Croke Park was in 2009, with this match setting a world record attendance for a club fixture as 82,208 watched their European Cup semi-final.
URC, which is contested by teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa and Wales, announced in July that it set a new cumulative attendance record of 1.69 million during its 2023-24 season.
The figure represented a 3% rise in overall attendances, with crowds averaging at 11,200 per game. The competition formerly known as Pro14 has been boosted by the addition of the top four South African sides, with 50,388 fans watching last season’s grand final between the Bulls and Glasgow Warriors in Pretoria.
The 2024-25 URC season commenced last month.
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