Which Countries, Towns & Cities Are Most Interested In The Six Nations?

Of the countries who make up the Six Nations Rugby Championship, Ireland is the most engaged with the annual tournament, according to research carried out by Gambling.com. 

Google data collected over a five-year period suggests Irish fans – both north and south of the border – produce a higher search volume per capita than each of their Six Nations counterparts. 

Considering Ireland have only won the tournament once in the last five years, it’s somewhat surprising to see the Emerald Isle top the table of search statistics. 

Mind you, Wales – winners in 2019 and 2021 – came in a close second in our research with an ‘Average Popularity Score’ of 84 – just 1.03 shy of the benchmark set by Ireland. 

We arrived at these figures by scrutinising three keyword search terms related to the Six Nations over the course of what we deem to be a significant period of time (five years). 

Using Google Trends, data was collected on the popular search engine terms ‘Six Nations’ and ‘6 Nations’ across the UK and Ireland, while France and Italy were examined for their linguistical equivalent. 

A third search term – ‘Ireland Rugby’ and ‘Italiana Rugby’ for example – was also thrown into the mix, measured over the past 12 months to incorporate last year’s Six Nations campaigns as well as the build-up to the 2023 renewal. 

When the results of the three search terms in each of the six countries had been compiled, we were able to break it down and pinpoint the most-engaged towns, cities and provinces. 

Using Google’s ‘interest by City’ metric, locations with the biggest search volume per capita were scored out of 300 before being arranged into a top 10 as below. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their country’s return to rugby’s top table in recent years, five of the top 10 most engaged locations within the Six Nations are in France. 

Le Bleus are the current holders and  give them a strong chance of becoming the first team since England (2016, 2017) to defend the Six Nations title this year. 

They’re odds-on favourites in the 2023  despite having never won the Webb Ellis Cup before. 

They are hosting the World Cup this year though, which has perhaps contributed to a wave of French interest in Six Nations rugby as the last big test before they bid to win the biggest prize in the sport on home soil. 

If we take France and Italy out of the equation to focus on the UK and Ireland, it’s the Irish who win this Six Nations popularity contest, taking up the top three positions.

Notably, the top three – Holywood, Dromore and Lisburn in that order – are in Northern Ireland, with Leixlip in Kildare being the only Irish town south of the border to feature in the UK and Ireland’s top 10. 

Nohoval, a village around 26 kilometres south of Cork city, completes the top five places in Ireland that are most interested in the Six Nations. 

When it comes to the UK and Ireland, Wales is the second most-represented nation with three locations in our top 10.

The small village of Cwmafan in the Afan valley came out on top with a credible score of 238, putting it fourth in the UK and Ireland rankings and top of the Welsh-only rankings.

Rugby-mad Cwmafan locals would generally be associated with Cwmavon RFC, a feeder club for the Ospreys, one of four professional rugby union clubs in Wales.

And it seems they’re more engaged with the Six Nations than their counterparts in Porth, a similarly-sized Welsh town just 26 miles east of Cwmafan.

To their credit, residents of Porth still scored quite highly in our research with a result of 211 out of 300 – enough to put them sixth in the UK and Ireland table. 

Meanwhile, Scotland only has one representative in our UK and Ireland top 10, but it’s an impressive one. 

Innerleithen is a small town in the Scottish Borders with a reported population of just over 3,000, but it ranks fifth in the UK and Ireland for search data on the Six Nations and top of the pile in Scotland.

With a score of 218 out of 300, Innerleithen boasts a higher Six Nations search rate per capita than the entire regions of Burgundy (194) in France and Lombardy (167) in Italy. 

In England, with the men’s and women’s international football teams performing heroics over the past five years, it could be argued that rugby has lost further ground on the most popular sport across the nation.

As mentioned above, England ranks fifth out of six in our list of countries most excited for the Six Nations, a disappointing return for a country who share a record 39 titles with Wales. 

However, England remains dotted with rugby towns, and none is more enthused about the Six Nations than Wick, a village in Gloucestershire in the South West of the country. 

Wick, which has a population of less than 2,000 according to the 2021 Census, beat neighbouring town Bathford by a whisker when it comes to English towns most engaged by the Six Nations. 

Just nine miles split the towns and only one point separates their interest in the Six Nations, according to Google’s ‘interest by City’ metric.

Only one of the top five English towns most interested in the Six Nations is based in the north of the country – Esh Winning in County Durham.