What Red Roses’ success reveals about engagement, stadium scale and data responsibility

In 2021 the RFU launched its Every Rose strategy, including an ambition to fill the Allianz Stadium for a Red Roses match by 2027. At the time, the record attendance for a women’s rugby match in England was just 3,628. By 2025, the Women’s Rugby World Cup final was played in front of more than 82,000 fans at the Allianz. Attendance at this year’s W6N – the Grand Slam decider of which is set to take place between France and England this weekend – has reached record highs across the tournament, with England’s opening match against Ireland drawing a 77,000 strong crowd back to the Allianz Stadium. 

Each increase in attendance was not just a win for women’s sport; it unlocked new streams of fan data for the RFU. At the Allianz Stadium, the RFU gained the ability to analyse fan demographics and behaviours at scale.

Digital ticketing provided live data and insight into who was in attendance – analysis of the 2023 Grand Slam match showed that 52% of ticket purchasers were female, compared with around 20% for equivalent men’s matches. The crowd also had a much younger profile, including around five times as many first‑time buyers.

This kind of detailed breakdown was impossible in smaller venues such as the Stoop, with its 4,700‑seat capacity. Bigger stadiums have not just allowed women’s rugby to host more fans, they have helped stakeholders to properly identify new categories of fans for the first time.

Why big stadiums matter for data

Consultants have pointed out that, historically, many organisations have prioritised on‑field performance analytics, with fan and stadium data left behind. However, where organisations do invest in understanding and activating fan data, the returns are seen in higher engagement, increased merchandise and ticket revenue, stronger sponsorship propositions and improved media value.

Moving women’s rugby fixtures to larger stadiums such as the Allianz means more than just upping attendance - it expands the quantity and quality of supporter information available to organisers, though a variety of data capture methods.

Digital ticketing and identity

Every ticket purchased typically means personal data is captured, from names and emails to more granular data such as postcodes or club membership IDs. Larger venues with advanced ticketing systems often require each attendee to be registered, or at least encourage digital tickets for each seat, yielding a host of CRM data on who is in the stadium. By contrast, smaller stadium ticketing systems often lack the sophistication to ensure individual data is collected where tickets are bought in batches or via third parties, and not linked to an individual, providing far less granular information.

In-venue transactions

Larger stadiums have multiple retail points for food, beverages and merchandise which are increasingly cashless and integrated with club apps or loyalty programs. Each purchase can feed into an individual’s profile, or at least feed into insights on spending per head. A 5,000‑seat venue simply cannot generate the same depth of transactional insight as an 80,000‑seat stadium.

Connectivity and digital engagement

Large venues often offer public wi-fi, dedicated apps, AR experiences, or at-seat ordering – all of which usually require opt-ins or accounts. These channels generate device-linked data, meaning even something as simple as fans scanning a QR code for a halftime contest creates data capture opportunities. Smaller venues rarely have this infrastructure.

How crowd sizes change commercial outcomes

Bigger crowds can inform commercial strategies, not just through volume but through what the data reveals.  As the audience demographic changes with size increases, expanding out to include families, students, and a mix of both casual ‘event’ fans and traditional supporters, behaviour starts to diverge and produce commercially useful analytics.

Information around arrival times, spending patterns, engagement with marketing and likelihood of returning all vary more clearly. This creates opportunity but also means organisations are analysing far richer sets of personal data.

Similarly, tracking fan journeys over time becomes easier when applied to larger crowds, meaning it can be easier to convert first‑time spectators into repeat attendees, season ticket holders or digital subscribers.

Research around recent women’s rugby tournaments indicated many first‑time attendees intended to return, creating long‑term value for stakeholders who are able to stay in touch with those attendees - although, that said, this kind of ongoing tracking has to be conducted with care to ensure compliance with data protection obligations like transparency, lawful basis and data retention.

More granular levels of data also strengthen the sponsorship and media value of individual teams. Sponsors increasingly want access to defined audiences. Being able to show not just who attends but also how they engage makes partnerships more attractive and easier to price, as well as shining a necessary focus on data sharing and marketing permissions. Attendance data also reinforces broadcaster confidence, influencing scheduling and rights decisions.

In short, fan data now sits at the centre of commercial strategy. As crowds grow, so too do the commercial opportunities and the obligations that come with processing that data in a compliant way.

Match day privacy

A sell‑out stadium does not just contribute to the match‑day experience - it creates a high‑volume, high‑variety environment for personal data. But with that comes obligations. Higher attendance and digitally enabled ‘smart’ stadiums materially raise the regulatory expectations on sports organisations under UK and EU data protection law as the processing becomes ‘large-scale’. 

As attendances at women’s sports events grow and the stadiums at which they are held become more digitally enabled, clubs are no longer dealing with isolated transactions but with continuous streams of fan data. That shift brings the processing firmly into large scale territory, which in turn raises the bar for transparency, governance and accountability.

Ticketing and identity data

Digital ticketing involves names, contact details and, often, demographic data such as age or gender. In large venues, tickets are usually assigned or transferred to individuals rather than bought in batches like physical tickets, which links each seat to a specific person. This means real‑time insight into crowd demographics and transforms ticketing data into an ongoing dataset rather than a one‑off record of a transaction.

Behavioural and engagement data

Ticket scans generate time-specific attendance data, while stadium apps, wi‑fi analytics and QR code interactions reveal when fans arrive, where they go and what they engage with. Although often described as anonymised, this data may become personal data where it is linked to accounts or devices. At scale, this activity can amount to profiling under GDPR.

Transactional data

Cashless food, drink, merchandise and hospitality purchases generate detailed records of spending behaviour. Even where not directly named, purchases may be linkable via seat, account or ticket type. The primary legal risk arises less from collection and more from reuse, particularly where datasets are combined or shared with partners.

Children’s data

Women’s sport often attracts more families, meaning family tickets, junior memberships and digital fan experiences frequently involve minors’ personal data. GDPR and the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code impose stricter requirements here, including parental consent in some cases, child‑appropriate transparency and strong limits on profiling and targeted marketing. At large‑scale events, a single fixture may involve the personal data of thousands of children.

The future

What the Red Roses have achieved on the international stage at the Allianz Stadium is increasingly being reflected at club level. In football, Arsenal are staging Women’s Super League matches regularly at the Emirates Stadium, Chelsea have committed to Stamford Bridge as the permanent home for their women’s team, and Brighton Women have announced plans for a purpose‑built women’s stadium.

Each of these moves expands the scale of match‑day model experience and significantly increases the volume of fan data being generated to a level that women’s sport has rarely had access to before. As long as stakeholders remain mindful of the associated increased regulatory and legal obligations, this shift towards parity of fan data available across women’s and men’s sports presents an exciting opportunity for women’s clubs to continue to level the commercial playing field.   

Co-written by Dom White of Pinsent Masons