Nine of the Top 10 most watched events on Irish TV in 2022 were from the world of sport, with only the Late Late Toy Show making a dent on sports dominant position.

The All Ireland Football and Hurling Finals filled two of the top three sporting places and the GAA featured another six in the extended Top 30 programmes to be viewed, with both Football and Hurling Semi-Finals as well as Kerry against Dublin in the Allianz League and the Munster Hurling Championship Final.

The Guinness Six Nations clash between France and Ireland split the two All Ireland Finals taking third place overall and second in sport, while the other Six Nations games all came in the Top 20, three more of them in the Top 10.

The FIFA World Cup produced 13 of the Top 30 events that we watched with marginally more watching Argentina’s Semifinal win over Croatia than tuned in to the Final.  That’s presumably the effect of midweek primetime versus the lure of shopping on the final Sunday before Christmas.

In total Football secured the lion’s share, with the Champions League Final between Liverpool and Real Madrid coming in 13th.  The two Bank of Ireland Autumn Nations games against South Africa and Australia made up the seven Rugby matches to feature with England against France the one game not to feature Ireland.

By way of comparison to the last FIFA World Cup year of 2018, a total of 654,000 watched France beat Croatia then as opposed to 783,000 this time round.

Back then there were ten games featured in the Top 50 programmes overall, suggesting this year’s was more popular again.  If that was replicated around the world, watch out for noises about shifting to a northern hemisphere winter world cup in the longer term.  But they wouldn’t would they?

Again to compare to four years ago, the All Ireland Football Final was up from 854,000 to 872,000 suggesting that even in a more fragmented world of viewing the big events will still draw a national audience.

There are other interesting points to emerge from this annual look back.  No  Women’s sporting events feature but we have to hope that will change in 2023.  Virgin Media took five of the 30 spots which is fair given no GAA and no World Cup coverage.  There were no football matches featuring the Republic of Ireland in the Top 30 but again we would hope that will change with France and the Netherlands playing us this year.

Here then are the Top 30 sporting programmes we watched together in 2022.