Extra eyes are on girls’s rugby than ever earlier than.
Following a extremely profitable Rugby World Cup final 12 months, supporter numbers within the UK climbed from 7.94m pre-existing followers of girls’s rugby to 13.21m, in line with analysis commissioned by BBC Sport.
England’s victory over Canada in September’s closing passed off in entrance of 81,885 followers at Allianz Stadium – a report for a girls’s rugby match and the second-highest attendance for a males’s or girls’s World Cup closing.
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’ successful tour of Australia to grow to be 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 Girls’s Six Nations is ready to be comfortably the largest but when it comes to crowd numbers.
Pre-tournament demand has already damaged information, with all 4 house nations staging fixtures at their nationwide stadiums.
The report crowd for a Girls’s Six Nations sport is 58,498 for the Grand Slam decider between England and France in 2023.
That report is ready to fall, with greater than 75,000 tickets offered for England’s opener towards Eire at Allianz Stadium on Saturday.
“There’s in all probability a line of pondering that audiences will simply continue to grow, however they’re really laborious to keep up,” Rugby Soccer Union director of girls’s rugby Alex Teasdale informed BBC Sport.
“The function of the Purple Roses as ambassadors has helped maintain a few of that robust buy-in, and the followers have had an excellent time.
“It has been actually pleasing to see, however anybody concerned in girls’s sport is aware of it isn’t a given.
“It’s important to work laborious to offer followers an excellent expertise so that they wish to hold coming again.”
Scotland will play their first Girls’s Six Nations match in entrance of followers at Murrayfield once they host England subsequent weekend.
Scotland girls’s report house attendance of seven,774 was set at Hive Stadium in 2024, however greater than 25,000 tickets have been offered for the fixture.
The anticipated report crowd would be the largest for a standalone girls’s sporting occasion in Scotland.
Eire’s sport towards Scotland on the ultimate weekend will probably be their first on the 51,711-capacity Aviva Stadium and their report house attendance of seven,754 is ready to be smashed, with greater than 16,000 tickets already reported to have been offered.
Wales, who play Scotland at Principality Stadium on the opening weekend, are aiming to raised final 12 months’s report crowd of 21,186 for a Wales girls’s crew occasion on house soil.
In the meantime, France will host England on the 42,115-capacity Stade Atlantique in Bordeaux within the closing spherical, the place they are going to hope to have a full home for a doable Grand Slam decider.
However will the leisure on the pitch match the clamour for tickets?
