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Over half a million peopled went through the turnstiles in the 72 Pool matches - 588, 275, to be exact. That is an incredible 12.5 per cent increase on the previous high mark of 524,624 and a whopping 20 per cent above last years total of 490,645.
Last season's most attended round was Round 2, with 86,051 fans going to the games. Amazingly, this total was bettered on five of the six rounds this year. When 106,406 fans watched the games in Round 3, eyebrows were raised almost as high as the crowd numbers, but, when that total was topped in Round 6, when 114,680 fans flooded in, many people had to sit down!
And looking at the figures on a match-by-match basis, we can see another record tumble. When 23,643 fans packed into Lansdowne Road to watch the Lions beat Cardiff Blues in Round 3, it beat the previous best total of 22,000 when Toulouse played Bath in 2000.
Leicester Tigers had the highest average attendance at just over 16,000 (48,723 from three home matches), followed by Leicester Tigers, Leinster Lions, Toulouse, Munster and Northampton Saints. In total nine sides averaged over 10,000 fans a match, another record in a record-breaking season.
