Premiership Women's Rugby Reports 23.4% Attendance Rise

Premiership Women's Rugby says average match attendance increased by 23.4% during the 2025-26 season, extending the league's growth after England won the Women's Rugby World Cup on home soil. BBC Sport reported the figures after a campaign that ended in June with Saracens beating first-time finalists Trailfinders to secure a record fourth PWR title.

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The increase followed England's World Cup triumph at Twickenham in September 2025. It also came after United States international Ilona Maher left Bristol Bears. Maher, described by the BBC as rugby union's most-followed player on social media, drew unprecedented attention to the league during her spell with Bristol in the 2024-25 campaign.

PWR reported gains beyond attendance. Its social-media following rose by 132%, while its database grew by 310%. The league also recorded more than 111 million views across YouTube, Meta and TikTok, representing a 174% increase in viewing figures. Those numbers cover a season in which every PWR match was shown live for the first time, with coverage available across TNT Sports, BBC Sport and YouTube.

PWR executive chair Genevieve Shore said the results were encouraging because they followed the high benchmark established in 2024-25. She acknowledged that Maher's impact had brought a major surge of attention to the competition, but said continued growth after that spike and after the World Cup showed that the league's work was connecting with supporters. The figures released by PWR measure several different areas, including in-person attendance, owned audience data, social following and video consumption.

The nine-team league will begin its 2026-27 season in November. PWR was launched in 2023 when the Premier 15s was rebranded, and the latest reported increases give the competition a larger audience base entering its next campaign. The available figures do not provide individual club attendance totals or a full match-by-match breakdown, but PWR's stated 23.4% average-attendance rise indicates that growth continued across the completed season even after the exceptional attention generated by Maher's earlier stint.