More eyes are on girls’s rugby than ever earlier than.
Following a extremely profitable Rugby World Cup final 12 months, supporter numbers in the UK climbed from 7.94m pre-existing followers of girls’s rugby to 13.21m, in response to analysis commissioned by BBC Sport.
England’s victory over Canada in September’s ultimate occurred in entrance of 81,885 followers at Allianz Stadium – a file for a girls’s rugby match and the second-highest attendance for a males’s or girls’s World Cup ultimate.
It was the most-watched girls’s rugby match on UK tv, with a record-breaking peak viewers of 5.8m viewers. It additionally beat each the Six Nations and the British and Irish Lions’ profitable tour of Australia to turn into the most-watched rugby match of final 12 months.
Rugby union was the second most-watched girls’s sport in 2025, so with momentum at an all-time excessive, this 12 months’s Women’s Six Nations is ready to be comfortably the biggest but when it comes to crowd numbers.
Pre-tournament demand has already damaged information, with all 4 residence nations staging fixtures at their nationwide stadiums.
The file crowd for a Women’s Six Nations recreation is 58,498 for the Grand Slam decider between England and France in 2023.
That file is ready to fall, with greater than 75,000 tickets bought for England’s opener in opposition to Ireland at Allianz Stadium on Saturday.
“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 girls’s rugby Alex Teasdale advised BBC Sport.
“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.
“It has been actually pleasing to see, however anybody concerned in girls’s sport is aware of it isn’t a given.
“You have to work hard to give fans a brilliant experience so they want to keep coming back.”
Scotland will play their first Women’s Six Nations match in entrance of followers at Murrayfield after they host England subsequent weekend.
Scotland girls’s file residence attendance of seven,774 was set at Hive Stadium in 2024, however greater than 25,000 tickets have been bought for the fixture.
The anticipated file crowd will be the biggest for a standalone girls’s sporting occasion in Scotland.
Ireland’s recreation in opposition to Scotland on the ultimate weekend will be their first at the 51,711-capacity Aviva Stadium and their file residence attendance of seven,754 is ready to be smashed, with greater than 16,000 tickets already reported to have been bought.
Wales, who play Scotland at Principality Stadium on the opening weekend, are aiming to higher final 12 months’s file crowd of 21,186 for a Wales girls’s staff occasion on residence soil.
Meanwhile, France will host England at the 42,115-capacity Stade Atlantique in Bordeaux in the ultimate spherical, the place they may hope to have a full home for a potential Grand Slam decider.
But will the leisure on the pitch match the clamour for tickets?
