The Gallagher Premiership is one of the best Rugby competitions in the world. There is excitement almost every weekend. The format of the competition has changed a lot in recent years, so people often don’t know how many games there are.
How many games are in the Gallagher Premiership? There are currently 110 games in a Gallagher Premiership season. This was the case in the 2022/23 season, where each of the 11 teams played 20 games. This can be worked out by the number of teams in the league, 11, being multiplied by the number of home fixtures they will play, 10. This is the same for all leagues that play 1 round of home and away fixtures.
The number of games in a Gallagher Premiership season seems like a simple question. You might expect there to just be one single answer, but it is more complicated than you think. For example, at the start of the 2022/23 season, there was planned to be more games than was eventually played.
At the start of the season, there were 13 teams in the Gallagher Premiership, which meant each team was supposed to play 24 games in the season, playing every team in the league at home and away. This is the standard way in which the majority of major rugby divisions work. It would have meant a total of 156 games being played.
However, the League had to make changes when Worcester and Wasps folded just a couple of months into the season. The games against these teams were considered null and void, so by season’s end, the table showed that each of the remaining eleven teams had played just 20 games in tota, instead of the planned 24.
That is despite some teams playing more games in the league this season, but those games were wiped from the League table. Seeing as the Gallagher Premiership does not plan for any more rugby teams to fold, there should be 110 games in the Premiership season moving forwards.
Gallagher Premiership teams play more games than this every season, likely to play somewhere around 30 games per season. This is because they will also play in the Premiership Rugby Cup, as well as in either the European Champions Cup or the European Challenge Cup.
How does Gallagher Premiership Work?
The format of the Gallagher Premiership has changed quite a bit in the last few years, mainly due to two teams folding and having to leave the league. But the format seems to be set moving forwards.
The current league is made up of eleven teams, who play in a round robin format. This means that every team will play each other both at home and away. Points are awarded for winning or drawing a game, as well as points being available for a couple of bonuses.
At the end of the season, the four teams with the most points will qualify for the semi-finals, with the top two teams being the host of each semi-final. The winners of each semi-final then progress to the final, which is held at Twickenham. The winner of that game is crowned the champion of the Premiership for that season.
This is a combination of a league and knockout format. It means that the team who finishes first in the table is not automatically crowned champion, with the team in fourth place still having the chance of winning the title. There is currently no relegation in the Premiership, which has been the case the last few years.
There is still some jeopardy for the rest of the teams in the league, even if they do not finish in the top four. The top eight teams in the Premiership qualify for the European Champions Cup in the following season. This is a big draw for teams, so there is still a race to get into the top eight.
What is the average attendance at the Gallagher Premiership?
The Gallagher Premiership is the most popular rugby competition in England. This means that quite a few of the teams draw big crowds, but some teams do not have quite the same large following.
The average attendance in the Gallagher Premiership is around 15,000 per game. This figure varies a huge amount based on a few different things. One of the major factors is the different teams that are playing at home any given weekend. There is quite a large variety of followings across Premiership teams.
For example, Leicester Tigers tend to bring in a crowd of at least 20,000 for pretty much every home game. Whereas a team like Newcastle Falcons will only bring around 4,000 in for every home game. There also tends to be a higher attendance when Premiership games are held outside of the Premiership stadiums.
Games which are held at stadiums like Twickenham and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will have a much higher attendance because they are special occasions and marketed like one. So, this will make the attendance of the league vary massively.
How many games do each team play in Rugby Premiership?
At the moment, each team in the Premiership will play 20 Gallagher Premiership games per season. At the start of the 2022-23 season, this was supposed to be 24 games per season, as they had 12 teams to play both at home and away.
However, the folding of Wasps and Worcester in the first couple of months of the season means that each team now only has 10 teams that they need to play at home and away. This means that each team will play 20 games in a Premiership season. This is not all the games that a team who is in the Gallagher Premiership will play per season.
The 20 games per season does not include the other competitions that Premiership Rugby teams are involved in. Premiership Rugby teams will also play in the European Champions Cup, the European Challenge Cup and the Premiership Rugby Cup. This is going to add at least eight extra games to the fixture list of every Premiership team on top of their league games.
Some Premiership Rugby teams can end up playing almost 35 games in a season, depending on how far they progress in each competition. This can be quite a strain on the squad, which is why the Premiership games are sometimes the games in which players are rotated in and out of the squad.