Better Collective, Copenhagen
December 19, 2022
We have collected data from nearly 3000 players who participated in the Rugby Championship or the Rugby World Cup since the Tournament’s inception in 1987, to find out which city has produced the most professional Rugby players in the world.
According to the results of the analysis, if data from World Cup and Championship are combined: Auckland, New Zealand has produced the most professional Rugby players: 118. Buenos Aires, Argentina is in second place: 88 professional Rugby players were born there. Sydney, Australia is third, having produced 58 professional Rugby players.
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Distinction for the United Kingdom
When considering countries, the United Kingdom has produced the most players: 473, followed by New Zealand (369), and South Africa (253). If looking only at players who were part of the winning teams in their respective tournaments Auckland (New Zealand) has produced the most overall winners: 23, followed by Christchurch (New Zealand) 13 and Brisbane (Australia) 10.
Rugby World Cup and Championship
We have also looked at the results when the World Cup and Championship data are divided.
Buenos Aires, Argentina has produced the most Rugby World Cup players – 138, with Auckland, (135) and Sydney (82) in second and third place, respectively.
Auckland produced the most Rugby World Cup Winners (11), with Brisbane, Australia (9) and Christchurch (7) in the second and third place, respectively.
Buenos Aires has also produced the most Rugby Championship players (31), with Sydney (30) and Auckland (27) in second and third place, respectively.
Auckland has also produced the most Rugby Championship winners (12), with Christchurch and Wellington tying for second place with eight winners.
The Methodology
Players participating in the Rugby World Cup were collected from 1987 until the latest World Cup 2019. Players participating in the Rugby Championship were collected from 2006 until 2022 (Between 2006-2011, the Tournament was called Tri Nations and in 2020, this was also the name of the Tournament and yet included in the Championship data).
Where the place of birth of a player was missing, they were omitted from the analysis.
Data was found through the official Wikipedia pages of the respective tournaments and the official websites of the tournaments.
Better Collective is a global sports-betting media group providing entertaining and engaging platforms for fans of sports and esports. The Copenhagen-based company offers a wide range of editorial content, bookmaker information, data insights, betting tips, iGaming communities and educational tools.
