British and Irish Lions ‘have the best fans in world’
OPINION: Do the British and Irish Lions have the best supporters in the rugby world?
Yes, it’s a no-contest - on a numbers game alone.
Would 35,000 New Zealand supporters descend on the UK in the early stages of winter to follow an All Blacks tour?
That’s how many Lions fans are slated to come to New Zealand, based on English newspaper reports and New Zealand tourism projections.
In a piece in The Guardian on the ‘‘rampant commercialism of the Lions’’, writer Gerard Meagher revealed why the Lions were big business last time they toured New Zealand in 2005 - when 20,000 supporters trekked halfway round the world.
Meagher noted New Zealand Rugby made a £12 million (NZ$21.5M in today’s money) profit from the 2005 tour and the New Zealand economy benefited by NZ$115M in foreign exchange gains and another NZ$250M in tourism receipts.
‘‘Those figures are expected to be even higher this year,’’ Meagher said.
Little wonder, he noted, that most hotel room are sold out in the host cities and ‘‘some accommodation is available on Airbnb for as much as £670 [NZ$1200] a night in Wellington, where hotels are fully booked on the night of the second test’’.
With numbers like that, it’s a shame the Lions only tour New Zealand once every 10 to 12 years.
Steve Tew and the NZR board are no doubt already licking their lips with the Lions expected to have almost twice as many fans here this year than they brought in 2005.
The Australian Rugby Union made an estimated NZ$71M from the last Lions tour in 2013.
British and Irish rugby fans are renowned as big spenders. Granted, the average Lions supporter, arguably, has more disposal income than his or her Kiwi counterpart.
Rugby union is a toff’s game in Britain and Ireland, but more of an egalitarian affair here.
Thus, the majority of All Blacks supporters have probably never watched their team in the northern hemisphere -and most will have missed out on a ticket to the 2017 tests with a fair chunk allocated to opposition fans through special travel packages.
The Lions fans, however, aren’t only champions in the economic arena.
Rugby’s barmy army think nothing of abandoning their annual holiday at some sunny European beach resort to spend June in New Zealand where climes are hardly balmy in the more southern latitudes.
Yet there are likely to be as many - if not more - Lions fans in the stands at the New Zealand venues as home supporters.
And it’s a given that they’ll make a lot more noise.
Any New Zealand rugby fan who hasn’t been to Twickenham, Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium or Lansdowne Road in Dublin or didn’t take out a mortgage for a ticket to the last Lions tour here is in for a treat when the Lions faithful find full voice.
New Zealand rugby fans generally sit and watch in comparative silence with the reverential hush of a high church congregation.
So welcome the Lions fans - for their pounds and their passion.
They - more than Kiwis and South Africans - are rugby’s greatest fans.