It is always fascinating to look back on the most watched Sporting events on TV over the past twelve months and while the table tells a story it is even more interesting to look at comparison to years gone by.
Sport in 2023 on free-to-air television has proved its value more than ever before. 33 of the most watched TV programmes were live sports events last year, compared to 30 in 2022, only 22 in 2021, 14 in 2020, and 26 in 2019 the last year of a Rugby World Cup.
That is one impressive lift but another, and perhaps even more heartening from a sporting perspective is the aggregate TV audience over those Top 30 events. In 2023 that was 20.884 million, a very healthy 17.9 percent increase on the previous 12 months.
The Top 20 comparative figure for 2019 shows an 18.9 percent increase.
The top four programmes, all Rugby and three on Virgin media drew audiences of over one million. The top six all attracted a bigger watching public than the top sporting event of 2022.
That was the All Ireland Football Final which drew 872,000 for Kerry against Galway. Fast forward 12 months and throw Dublin into the mix and the number rose to 977,000, a 12 percent year-on-year increase.
The All Ireland Hurling Final also climbed from 786,000 to 839,000 a 6.7 per cent increase.
2023 was also a breakthrough year for Women’s sport. Since we have been keeping these records several events have come close to breaking into the top 30 but this was the year with the Republic of Ireland’s World Cup games against Canada and Australia drawing 551,000 and 511,000. That was enough to put them second and third out of the six football games to feature with only the men’s Euro 2024 qualifier against France topping them with 601,000.
The aggregate 1.552 million that watched the three Euro 24 Qualifiers for the Men’s team represents a 5 percent dip in the number that watched the Top 3 qualifiers in the 2020 campaign.
The big three sports of Rugby GAA and Football dominated the list as ever though with the Olympics on the horizon in a time zone-friendly setting of Paris we can expect next year’s figures to mark a breakthrough for one challenger sport.
The Tokyo Games were not conducive to big audiences with the time difference but in 2012 754,000 tuned in to watch Katie Taylor win Gold in London. That was the fourth most popular event after the Republic of Ireland against Croatia in Euro 2012 and the two All-Ireland Finals which out of interest drew audiences of 974,000 and 901,000.
The Rugby World Cup made a massive difference with huge national audiences invested in the Irish team’s progress. Comparison to 2019 is almost redundant given that it took place in Japan in an early daytime slot. The Irish defeat to New Zealand in the Quarterfinal then was watched by 766,000, compared to the 1.384 million that tuned in on a Saturday night in 2023.
The Guinness Six Nations aggregate viewing figure was 3.239 million, a nine percent rise on the equivalent games back in 2019.
While streaming and paywall moves have impacted the world of sports media live sporting events remain the cornerstone of the free-to-air programming in Ireland and that shows no sign of lessening any time soon.
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