Attendances for the opening two rounds of the Munster senior hurling championship are up over 15% on last year’s corresponding four fixtures.
Close to 100,000 – 95,553 – have been at the games thus far in Walsh Park, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Semple Stadium and LIT Gaelic Grounds.
That’s almost 15,000 more than the 81,085 figure for the matches in Cork, Ennis, Limerick and Thurles in 2018.
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With stand tickets no longer available, Cusack Park is expected to be close to, if not a sell-out for the visit of Tipperary on June 2.
And the same again is expected to be the case on June 16 when Clare entertain Cork.
After a couple of defeats and a number of injury worries arising from Sunday’s game against Tipperary, it remains to be seen if Waterford supporters will get behind their team when they play host to Limerick on June 2.
The 11,012 crowd that took in last Sunday week’s Waterford-Clare game was lower than expected although the Banner did return tickets.
Last year’s Munster SHC attracted a total of almost 250,000, the highest attendance for a round game being the 34,607 that watched the Cork-Limerick draw in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on a Saturday evening.
The Leinster SHC numbers are slightly down on last year, approximately 3,000, although there are several prominent games coming beginning with Galway-Wexford in Pearse Stadium on Sunday.
Galway’s trips to Nowlan Park on June 9 and Parnell Park on June 15 should also pull in sizeable crowds as should the Wexford-Kilkenny game in Innovate Wexford Park on that latter date.
There is pretty reading for the Ulster Council too as the attendances for their first three SFC games have increased by over 13% on last season’s opening two weekends.