Galway’s victory over Waterford in Sunday’s All Ireland Senior Hurling final jumped straight in as the most-watched show on Irish television so far this year, with over one million viewers tuning in to watch the match live on RTÉ2.
Galway’s nail-biting win over a spirited Waterford drew an average audience of 901,500 to RTÉ2’s live coverage of the game making it the number one programme for the year so far.
73% of all those watching TV at the time were tuned-in to The Sunday Game Live on RTÉ2.
The TV audience peaked at over 1.1 million people at the very end of the game as the Tribesmen hung on to claim a famous victory and bring the Liam McCarthy cup back to Galway for the first time since 1988.
This year’s All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final has also been the single biggest live stream event for RTÉ Player so far this year and saw the strongest volume of live streams for any All-Ireland Hurling Final on record for RTÉ Player with 60,987 live streams in total.
This shows an increase of 40% on the 2016 All-Ireland Hurling Final streams and the strongest volume of live streams for any Sunday Game Live so far this year.
Meanwhile, RTÉ2’s live coverage of Saturday’s 1-1 draw between the Republic of Ireland and Georgia in Tbilisi drew an average audience of 486,000 peaking at 639,000 at the end of the game.
47% of those watching TV at the time were watching the game on RTÉ2.
Attention now turns to tonight’s crunch game at the Aviva Stadium against Serbia where the figure is likely to climb higher, despite the disappointing performance from Saturday.
That is the beauty of sport that there is always another chance to make things right and with a full house in Ballsbridge the TV audience is also likely to be high as Martin O’Neill’s side put their World Cup qualifying hopes on the line.
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