Rugby League: Wembley Ashes Test to set UK attendance record
The first rugby league Ashes series in over two decades is set to see a record attendance for its first Test at Wembley between England and Australia.
The Rugby Football League will see over 57,000 head to Wembley Stadium this weekend to see the hosts take on the Kangaroos in the first of a three-Test series – matches at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium and Leeds’ AMT Headingley are both sold out.
A number of tickets have been given away to local school kids and NHS workers, but the expected crowd at the country’s national stadium is a tonic amid a number of financial issues within rugby league.
The record attendance for an Ashes Test in the UK – when Great Britain played Australia rather than England – is held by the 1994 match at Wembley Stadium. The record attendance for the Ashes in its entirety was in 1932, when 70,000 headed to the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Rugby League heads to London
It also means this three-Test Ashes series is on course to sell 130,000 tickets over the next three weeks, just 10,000 short of a record series attendance for the United Kingdom, when the Kangaroos played Great Britain at Wembley Stadium, Manchester United’s Old Trafford and Leeds United’s Elland Road in 1994.
Speaking to CityAM earlier this month, RL Commercial boss Rhodri Jones said a healthy chunk of the tickets had been sold to those with London postcodes and fans who purchased London Broncos season tickets would receive a free ticket to the Wembley Test.
“It shows the popularity of rugby league as a sport in this country,” he said. “It shows that it’s not just in the north of England and it shows you that there is a market in the south of England for rugby league.
“The reemergence of London Broncos under the new ownership, and the exciting plans that they got over the next couple of years – we always saw this as an opportunity to help the game in London.”