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The Lions is a media feeding frenzy. Once every four years the fans of four rival nations are brought together to form a single, super fanbase where everyone is fully focused on a single team and a single series of matches. The media capitalise, everyone from YouTubers and Podcasters to the BBC and Sky Sports making the same kind of content about the same team for months on end. There’s just one problem: people aren’t consuming it.
If you take a glance at the view count of your favourite rugby YouTuber, you will have noticed that since the Lions tour began, their numbers per video have decline - in some cases drastically so. We know that this affect is directly Lions related because videos about other teams such as Argentina and South Africa have remained strong - unaffected or even higher than normal.
One could put this down to market saturation: everyone is making the same video so people aren’t watching the same video over and over again - but that doesn’t explain the TV viewership. For the first Lions test against Australia, SKY reported viewership of 700,000. This means that the viewership of the Lions, supposedly the biggest show in town, was lower than that of the Premiership final, the URC final or the Super Rugby final. That’s before we even think to mention the 5.1 millions French people who tuned in to the TOP14 final.
So why aren’t people watching? The paywall is certainly a factor. The aforementioned competitions all have free-to-air coverage to a greater or lesser extent whereas the Lions will cost you 35 pounds per month for SKY Sports. Does it run deeper than that, though? Do people simply… not care?
We know there are people who actively dislike the Lions. Whether it be for sporting, historical or political reasons, they find it objectionable. But this is different from apathy. It was already an act of mental gymnastics for England, Ireland Scotland and Wales fans to suddenly all pull for the same team having spent the last 3 and a half years hating one another. This short-lived, compromise of a team playing exclusively on the other side of the world could never resonate as loudly as the national side or club side that you cheer for through thick and thin, 365 days a year.
Even so, something about the 2025 tour in particular has turned people off. We know Welsh fans a have been alienated by the lack of representation but the feeling is not exclusive to them. Polls have started springing up on social media asking if rugby fans will even watch the test. The results of these polls aren’t what matters, the fact the question is being asked is the real story.
So what’s the problem? Surely, the lack of jeopardy must play a major role. The Lions are usually the underdogs on these tours having won just one series this century. This time around, they are heavy favourites with 3 of the constituent 4 nations perfectly capable of beating a weak Australian side without each other’s help. Even the players know it, the full time whistle of the first test win was greeted with sighs of relief, not jubilant celebration.
The issue this creates is that not only are the games dull, but they contradict their own marketing. The Lions calls itself the best of the best, but no result they register in Australia can back that up. Even if they win by a record margin, people will just talk about how bad Australia are.
Andy Farrell called the 2nd test of the series the biggest games of the players’ lives, but no supporter really thinks that. When Wales made it to a World Cup semi final in 2011, fans packed into the principality stadium at the crack of dawn to watch them take on France. Have we seen anything even approaching that for the Lions, in any country? The walk simple doesn’t match the talk.
Hence, there is a disconnect. The players and coaches place the Lions as the pinnacle of the sport but the fans don’t care if they lose. The media focus all their resources on creating Lions content, but people don’t watch it. Even Advertisers on YouTube are falling for it, with the CPMs on Lions videos being much higher than for other teams, even though the views are lower.
It’s bizarre, and there’s no easy solution to it. Luckily for the Lions, the majority of the money is not made from their own fans but from the host nation, who, incidentally, make a great deal more money out of it than the Lions do.