By John Eakins
If there was ever evidence of the importance that sport plays in our everyday lives it must be the recently released list of the top 50 viewed TV programmes for 2018 (here). Sport dominates the list with 26 of the top 50 programmes comprising of live sporting events. Three sports are represented in this list, Football, Rugby and GAA with 14, 9 and 3 events respectively. The fact that Football and Rugby were particularly prevalent is not entirely surprising given that the FIFA Football World Cup took place last year and also given the success of the Ireland rugby team in winning the Grand Slam and Six Nations tournament and attaining a clean sweep of wins in the Autumn internationals including a win over the World Champions, New Zealand.
If there was ever evidence of the importance that sport plays in our everyday lives it must be the recently released list of the top 50 viewed TV programmes for 2018 (here). Sport dominates the list with 26 of the top 50 programmes comprising of live sporting events. Three sports are represented in this list, Football, Rugby and GAA with 14, 9 and 3 events respectively. The fact that Football and Rugby were particularly prevalent is not entirely surprising given that the FIFA Football World Cup took place last year and also given the success of the Ireland rugby team in winning the Grand Slam and Six Nations tournament and attaining a clean sweep of wins in the Autumn internationals including a win over the World Champions, New Zealand.
It is perhaps difficult to capture the relative popularities of the different sports using the data we have. If we take a simple measure of the most watched programme for each sport, Rugby had the most viewers (Six Nations: England V Ireland, 975,600) followed by Football (2018 FIFA World Cup: Croatia V England, 924,400) and then the GAA (All Ireland Hurling Final: Galway V Limerick, 854,400). But if we take (albeit rather crude) measures of the average rank and average viewership for the top 3 programmes for each sport, the GAA fairs a little better with a higher average viewership of its top 3 programmes in comparison to the top 3 programmes in Football. Both sports still lag behind Rugby on both counts however (Rugby: Average Rank of Top 3, 4.7, Average Viewership of Top 3, 877,200; Football: Average Rank of Top 3, 12.3, Average Viewership of Top 3, 739,133; GAA: Average Rank of Top 3, 13.3, Average Viewership of Top 3, 747,900).
An examination of these figures over time can provide some additional insights. I collected equivalent data for the top 20 viewed TV programmes from 2012 to 2018. The first graph below shows the number of sporting events in the top 20 across these years and a breakdown by sport. The first observation is that the number of sporting events with high viewership figures is generally increasing over time with 5 sporting events in the top 20 in 2012 and 2013, 12 in 2015 and 2016 and 10 in 2018. Rugby and Football figure prominently with these figures, being boosted by Ireland’s involvement in the 2015 Rugby World Cup and EURO 2016. But even in Non-World Cup years such as 2017 the figures hold up well with a relatively even distribution across the three sports.
An examination of these figures over time can provide some additional insights. I collected equivalent data for the top 20 viewed TV programmes from 2012 to 2018. The first graph below shows the number of sporting events in the top 20 across these years and a breakdown by sport. The first observation is that the number of sporting events with high viewership figures is generally increasing over time with 5 sporting events in the top 20 in 2012 and 2013, 12 in 2015 and 2016 and 10 in 2018. Rugby and Football figure prominently with these figures, being boosted by Ireland’s involvement in the 2015 Rugby World Cup and EURO 2016. But even in Non-World Cup years such as 2017 the figures hold up well with a relatively even distribution across the three sports.
The second graph below displays the audience figures for the most popular Rugby, Football and GAA event on TV in that year. In 2012 it was the Euro 2012 match between Ireland and Croatia. In 2013 it was the All-Ireland football final (GAA) between Dublin and Mayo. In 2014 it was France V Ireland in the Six Nations. In 2015 it was Rugby World Cup match between France and Ireland. In 2016 it was Ireland V France in the EURO 2016 round of 16 match. In 2017 it was the drawn All-Ireland football final (GAA) between Dublin and Mayo. And it 2018 it was the Six Nations match between Ireland and England where Ireland were going to the Grand Slam and Six Nations title. The fact that each sport (Rugby, Football and GAA) has been the most watched TV event at least twice over the 7 years examined suggests that there isn’t strong evidence of the popularity of one sport over another from a viewership point of view. Put another way, there doesn’t appear to be a discernible trend in viewership toward one sport. The closeness of the average level of viewership for these figures (Rugby, 842,600; Football, 963,300; GAA, 953,500) would appear to support this view.
RSS Feed