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BIGGEST AND THE BEST | RUGBY WORLD CUP 2015 YEAR IN REVIEW 2015 WORLD RUGBY 27The best-attended rugby event ever with full and vibrant venues More than 2.47 million tickets were sold across all 48 matches, including over 100,000 child tickets, through official channels with an average of 98 per cent of tickets sold across all venues. This included 120,000 tickets that were purchased through the tournament’s official resale service, a safe and secure platform through which fans could sell their unwanted tickets to other fans at face value. The most viewed rugby event everRecord numbers of spectators and viewers engaged with the tournament. RWC 2015 welcomed millions of fans to host cities, fanzones and venues, including an estimated 460,000 fans travelling from overseas. More than one million fans enjoyed the 15 official fanzones, spread across the country in each host city plus Rugby, the birthplace of the game, and London’s Trafalgar Square. The final was enjoyed by an estimated audience of 120 million and the tournament’s highlight viewing figures included a record TV audience of 25 million in Japan to watch the match against Samoa and 11.6 million viewers for England v Wales on ITV – the largest rugby audience in the UK since the 2007 final and the highest peak audience for a sporting event since the 2014 Football World Cup. Growth was also prominent in emerging markets such as Germany, China and Brazil, where record audiences were recorded.The most spoken about sporting event of 2015RWC 2015 was the most spoken about sporting event of the year and the most digitally engaged tournament to date. Throughout the tournament that saw 6.8 billion Twitter impressions, #RWC2015 was used twice a second for the duration of the event and more than five million times in total, there were 400 million video views on all social media channels, the website attracted 28 million unique users and the official App was downloaded 2.8 million times with use in 204 nations. In a first for Rugby World Cup, fans could also engage with the tournament through augmented reality via the ticket design. Over 300,000 used the Blippar App to access unique content by scanning their ticket including match previews, view from your seat and interviews. The introduction of giant Twitter screens at Twickenham also allowed over 2,000 fans per day in venue and across the world to display their messages of good luck to the teams.