KEY POINTS:
New Zealanders are turning off rugby en masse, with the latest Super 14 viewing figures showing a 25 per cent drop in the average audience in two years.
After nine rounds of Super 14, AGB Nielsen Media Research figures show that 23 games played in New Zealand have been watched by a cumulative audience of 4.1 million people. That's an average of 179,000, down from 238,000 at the same point in 2006.
More worrying is that the average this year is down on last year, when 22 leading All Blacks were kept out of the first seven rounds to prepare for the World Cup.
Even without the biggest names playing, the average audience after nine rounds last year was 182,000.
New Zealand Rugby Union professional rugby manager Neil Sorenson said: "We were under no illusions that we had a massive job to bring audiences back after the competition took a kick in the guts last year. The viewing figures are showing us that quite clearly the public are not rapt with the competitions in their current format ... "
In 2006, the audience never dropped below 100,000 for any given game. Twice this year it has dipped below six figures, for the Highlanders versus Force (70,000) and Blues versus Stormers (93,000).
Even local derbies have failed to excite viewers. Only 180,000 people watched the Blues play the Chiefs on the opening Saturday night of the competition, 38 per cent fewer people than watched the Crusaders play the Highlanders in 2006. And when the Hurricanes played the Chiefs on a Friday night in week three as they did this year and in 2006, the audience dropped 25 per cent, to 233,000.
SkyTV's head of sport Kevin Cameron said: "We are all getting over ... the World Cup and there was an overlapping with cricket which had very strong viewing figures."
