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By Bret Harris
October 12, 2009 Rugby Union is suffering from the poorest "brand health" of the major football codes with declining television ratings and crowd figures underlining a general depression in the game.
The gloomy view of rugby's current place in the sporting landscape has been backed up by market research commissioned by the ARU.
The ARU's "brand health" tracking for the March-June quarter confirms Australian rugby's popularity is on the wane and that passion has gone out of the game.
Of the four football codes and cricket, rugby union was the least entertaining, innovative, grassroots-orientated and social. Only 4 per cent more (29 per cent to 25 per cent) rated rugby more exciting than cricket.
The Brand Health Index (BHI) is comprised of four areas -- salience (advertising recall), equity (brand image statements), engagement (interest, viewership/attendance) and passion (preference, passion statements).
Engagement makes up 50 per cent of the BHI, while equity and passion comprise 20 per cent and salience 10 per cent.
The BHI is calculated on a score out of 100 built from a series of attributes and questions. Key questions were asked of all sporting codes to allow for comparison.
According to an ARU update to the state unions, overall interest in sport has decreased, possibly because of a large decrease in cricket's appeal and lots of negative media reports.
Rugby league and Australian rules had low scores on equity, but high scores on salience and passion.
Soccer and rugby union had low scores on salience, while rugby union was also low on passion. Cricket had the highest engagement score.
"Rugby's brand equity is diluted by both soccer and cricket with no one attribute being owned by rugby," the ARU said.
"Bluntly put, consumers are not passionate about rugby. They favour AFL and NRL, which tend to be more tribal. Disconcertingly, even our passionates are turning away."
"So overall, rugby has the poorest health, but the main areas of disadvantage are in passion and salience versus other sports."
The low BHI for rugby was driven by the low percentage of Australians indicating union as their favourite sports code. One in four indicated rugby was their favourite or second-favourite sport.
Rugby was regarded as "exclusive and hard to follow". There was a need to educate viewers on how to follow the game and understand the laws, penalties and referee gestures.
While interest in all sports was down, there was a possibility of fans migrating from other sports to rugby when general interest picked up again.
Television audiences and crowds for Test, Super 14 and club rugby had declined.
Overall crowd numbers at Test matches have fallen from 617,555 in 2006 to 386,287 this year, while attendances at Super 14 matches have dropped from 115,317 to 75,393 in the same period.
"TV ratings for inbounds have remained fairly constant versus previous year, Tri-Nations witnessed the greatest decline in audiences," the ARU said.
"Watching rugby is one of the easier engagement activities, yet we've been losing eyeballs for Tests since 2006 and for the first time Super rugby in 2009."
The evidence suggests rugby's core message is not getting through to general sports fans, which is a big problem because this is the market the ARU needs to grow the game.
Over the last three years awareness of rugby union advertising among sports enthusiasts has declined by 13 per cent.
The ARU told the states of the need to "re-engage this segment" of the market.
The downward trend has also continued in rugby membership and national participation.
Overall membership of the ARU and state unions fell 14 per cent from 32,837 to 28,027 over the past year.
Participation rates dropped 2 per cent from 193,382 in 2006 to 183,810 in 2008. The ARU will use these results to create a marketing strategy for next year.
The ARU said the purpose of the marketing will be, "to build and maintain rugby fans commitment to the code in a winning and losing season, now and in the future".
"Leveraging rugby's rich tradition and heritage we will rekindle the relevance of rugby among the evolving Australian sporting fan," it said.
http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,...-23217,00.html
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