Toronto Wolfpack crowd is a new Championship record

Toronto Wolfpack’s opening game at Lamport Stadium in 2019 has broken the Championship attendance record.

A total of 9,562 people turned up for the 52-10 win over Swinton Lions, the first time Toronto have played in Canada this calendar year having started their campaign on the road.

It is higher than Toronto’s previous best crowd of 8,217, set when Featherstone visited in 2018.

But it is also bigger than any other regular season Championship game.

The record was previously held by Bradford, who welcomed a crowd of 9,181 to their game with Leigh at Odsal back in 2015.

Prior to that, Widnes had held the record since 2008, when 8,149 saw them beat Salford.

The record takes into account all seasons since the Northern Ford Premiership disbanded in 2002, which resulted in the creation of National League One and Two.

It doesn’t include games in The Qualifiers or play-off games.

Dan Spencer updated the attendance stat we’d provided to Toronto overnight – we’d previously confirmed it was the best since the introduction of the Championship in 2015, but Dan now confirms their gate last night was the best for a league match outside Super League (not including Challenge Cup, play-offs, qualifiers, etc) since Hull got 12,150 to the derby against Hull KR at the Boulevard in 1997, when they were both in Division One.