GAELIC GAMES NEWS: IT MAY have made for tame and mostly unexciting television but last Saturday's International Rules opening Test between Ireland and Australia drew impressive viewing figures on TG4 – attracting 12.5 per cent of the audience share, more than the Leinster-Munster Magners League rugby match on the same station earlier this month.
It represented TG4’s largest television audience so far in its autumn schedule, with an audience peak of 317,000, and a reach of 689,000.
The Leinster-Munster match on October 2nd drew an audience peak of 313,000, with a reach of 537,000, and represented a 10.3 per cent of the audience share.
The 12.5 per cent share for the International Rules first Test in Limerick was over four times higher than TG4’s average three percent. It’s also higher than other recent live sporting broadcasts on the station, including the All-Ireland under-21 hurling final last month (which attracted a 10.6 per cent share), and the Munster-Treviso Magners League match last Friday (which drew a 6.2 per cent share).
Interestingly, while last month’s All-Ireland women’s football final between Dublin and Tyrone drew an audience peak of just 163,000 that was actually 15.7 per cent of the audience share (or those watching television at that time). Also high on the TG4 list this autumn is the Kerry county football final earlier this month, between Dr Crokes and Austin Stacks, which drew a 9.4 per cent market share, the highest of any county final since 2007.
On another comparative note, RTÉ 2’s live coverage of the Connacht-Leinster Magners League match last Saturday evening, about half of which overlapped with the International Rules, attracted an audience peak of 294,000, in the final minutes of the game – only slightly less than TG4’s audience peak for the International Rules. Also on Saturday evening, RTÉ’s highlights programme of the International Rules match attracted an audience peak of 129,000.
It’s also worth noting both live events – the International Rules and the Connacht-Leinster game – also overlapped with the X Factor on UTV/TV3, which attracted an average audience of 927,000 between the two channels in Ireland across the two hours.
The GAA had come in for criticism for awarding the TV rights for this year’s series to the Irish-language station, also one of the series sponsors.
There was also confusion when the GAA announced last week the series would also be broadcast live on Eurosport and thus available in 57 countries, to a potential audience of 110 million. However, this excluded British Eurosport, the only version of Eurosport available to Irish viewers.
The Ireland team regrouped in Dublin yesterday evening, at Carton House near Maynooth for their build-up to Saturday’s game in Croke Park, which like last week, has a 7pm start.
Cork’s Michael Shields and Down captain Benny Coulter both missed out on the first Test, as Shields was on club duty and Coulter was nursing a hamstring, but it seems one or both will return.
The Australians had a full training session in Croke Park yesterday evening, and will train there again tomorrow. Their seven-point advantage from the first Test in Limerick – 47 to 40 – is far from unassailable, but the Australians are understandably confident they can prevail.
“Well that’s our intention, obviously,” said Patrick Keane, the team spokesman. “But we fully expect Ireland to be better. We hope there are some things we can do a bit better too, but both of us have had a good look at each other now after the first game, and tactically, I think both of us will change things around a little.
“We’d hope, too, there’ll be as many people there as possible, at least 50,000, and preferably 60,000. For our players this is likely their only chance to play in Croke Park, and we’d like as many people there as possible. I think the bigger the crowd the more exciting it will be.”
