Rbs Six Nations Draws In £420m
The RBS Six Nations Championship delivered a £420.94m total economic impact for the six competing nations according to a survey by MasterCard.
The study estimated that England enjoyed a positive economic impact of £88.38m – the largest of the participating countries.
Ireland received a boost of £81.85m, followed by France with £81.21m, Wales with £72.50m, Scotland drawing in £62.90m spur and Italy seeing a £34.10m benefit from the championship.
Previous research by RBS suggested that the 2008 RBS Six Nations Championship generated a total economic impact of £394.4 m across the six competing countries.
Rugby is also continuing to see a growth in both popularity and participation according to the research which found that more than 2.6m people currently play the sport in the six competing nations.
The largest numbers are in England, where 687,000 people played rugby in 2009, an estimated 4.4% increase from 2007.
The research found that the Six Nations tournament remains popular across Europe with an estimated 125m people watching the 2010 Six Nations Championship on television across the six participating nations – an average of 8.3m viewers per match.
In addition, an estimated 1,054,654 people attended 2010 matches, which is an increase on last the previous season, which saw attendances of 981,963.
The MasterCard research identifies numerous other examples across the Six Nations participants, including in France, where the rights-holding broadcaster (France Televisions) recently renewed its contract for £90 million (cited as €100 million) over four seasons, an increase of 28% and in Wales, where Championship matches achieve an average of 65% television audience share.
