Napier is New Zealand’s top cricket-watching town

Napier is New Zealand’s top cricket-watching town

25 March 2015

Neither the biggest, last, and probably happiest New Zealand Cricket World Cup crowd in Auckland, or a capacity Wellington crowd, could unseat Napier as New Zealand’s top cricket-watching town.

A bumper 41,279 people were at Eden Park yesterday for New Zealand’s semi-final victory over South Africa, but with Auckland’s large population, that represented just under 3 percent of the people living within 50km of the stadium.

Wellington’s quarter-final capacity crowd of 30,268 on the weekend was 7.17 percent of the local population.

But both the capital and the country’s biggest city were outstripped by Napier’s New Zealand-Afghanistan match earlier this month, where 10,022 people turned up, representing 7.59 percent of the local population of 132,129 living near to McLean Park.

Napier also had the lowest attendance proportionally, with 1,221 people (0.92 percent) watching the West Indies play the United Arab Emirates.

As Statistics NZ’s chart shows, the top three crowd games of the Cricket World Cup all featured the Black Caps, with Wellington’s England-Sri Lanka game the best-attended other game. Overall, after Napier and Wellington, Nelson had the next best-attended game, followed by Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton, and Auckland, where relatively small ground capacities would have counted against them.

For more information about the biggest crowds relative to local populations or for more information and Statistics New Zealand's chart showing the biggest crowds relative to local populations, see Who are New Zealand’s biggest cricket fans? or the chart below.

The local populations used in the chart are the usually resident population living within 50km of each ground. We’ve had to ignore factors like capacity of stadium and whether it was sold out, travelling fans, and the numbers of different ethnic groups living in New Zealand. Darker-coloured cricket ball represent Black Caps games.

This chart is available at http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/NZ-biggest-cricket-fans.aspx

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