The Republic of Ireland’s World Cup Qualifier play-off first-leg on Saturday evening against Denmark in Copenhagen was watched by an average of 848,000 viewers, 52% of all those watching TV at the time. Viewership peaked at 1.01 million as the game drew to a close.

Earlier on Saturday, Ireland’s huge win over South Africa in the first of this year’s Guinness Series internationals at the Aviva Stadium was watched by an average of 631,100 viewers with 48.4% of the available audience tuned-in to RTÉ2.

At 5.00am on Sunday morning the first EirGrid International Rules test in Adelaide between Ireland and Australia was watched by an average of 39,600 viewers on RTÉ2, 51% of the available audience while 93,000 tuned-in to the highlights on Sunday evening again on RTÉ2.

Broadly the same ratio applied to online viewing with RTÉ Player recording 63,575 live streams of the soccer, 47,055 for the rugby and 6,416 live streams on Sunday for the International Rules Series, with a further 6,825 catch-up streams later in the day.

Tonight’s crucial second leg of the qualifier, a game that will determine whether or not we go to Russia next year will likely attract an even larger audience given the demand for tickets and the importance of the game.

The International Rules takes place next Saturday morning with a later start time of 0830 and that will be followed by Ireland against Fiji in the Guinness Series at 5 pm.

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