Amazing figures. So that’s 1st and 3rd secured for rugby football this year. All the more amazing when you consider both the England and New Zealand games would have had suppressed home audiences due to England on Patrick’s Day and NZ on a Saturday evening with a huge pub audience and there being over 50k in the ground on Sat.
In contrast, whilst the England soccer game is very impressive, it was on a weekday evening with people more likely to be home.
Great to see the strong ratings for rugby football again.
Youre some man — You’d dismiss lads trying to introduce the SKY coverage for the AI Finals - but you’re glad to slip in C4 here to suit your agenda
Sky Sports is a premium channel however, Channel 4 is available to a far greater number of people. Similarly during the Six Nations and FIFA World Cup they are available on BBC and ITV/UTV, both of whom are available to far greater numbers than Sky Sports subscriber numbers in Ireland.
The reality is, in the war for TV ratings, it is rugby or association football leading the pack.
The GGA continues to fall back as greater options arrive for the Irish public and old people who knew no better die off.
The GAA is by county and differing codes, mate - the others are national. Shocking that I had to explain that to you — I hope you can work out the permutations of this revelation all on your own?
As I have explained to other GGA zealots, true sports which capture a nation’s heart don’t fall back to such pathetic excuses.
The NRL and AFL Grand Finals annually are two of the highest rated programmes in Australia. The AFL regularly being number one.
It is not an issue for the Super Bowl in capturing number one.
GGA events are becoming more and more niche, interesting to the counties involved. Like baseball in the US.
By contrast, the international sports on the island take the cheese. Remember that these ratings are all in the South- the Irish rugby football team secure big ratings up north as well as the ROI and NI teams. If the only people in Dublin who care about Limerick getting to a final are ex Limerick themselves, imagine Derry or Antrim?
The peak audience for the hurling, adding the crowd in the stadium with the TV audience, was 1.090 million. The peak audience for Saturdays friendly, with the same calculations, was 1.087million. By my calculations, despite being held on a glorious summers Sunday when many would have been outdoors and recording the game for later viewing, more eyes watched the hurling which is incredible really. The friendly was on at peak TV viewing times (there is a reason XFactor is shown Saturday night and Songs of Praise Sunday afternoon) and still failed to match the hurling!
As an aside do we have access to the figures that watched IRFU 15 v Argentina and will someone post up the viewing figures for IRFU XV v USA when they are available next week.
Also the rubby team supposedly represent the island of Ireland, technically every person on the island could have been supporting them (around 6.6m people).
Both hurling teams have a combined support of less than 500k.
more people did watch the England game vs the Ireland NZ game
Joint 1st on 791k are the Ireland England Rugby game and the World Cup Semi Final 791k
2nd Ireland vs NZ 740k
3rd Limerick Cork in the all Ireland final 728k
4th Dublin Tyrone 707k
