Whether it was the growing optimism from the opening game against Scotland, or maybe the spreading realisation that a shock was on the cards, but Saturday’s share of the available TV audience watching on RTÉ for The Rugby World Cup match against Japan were up on the previous week.
77 per cent of viewers that were up for the 0815 kick off were watching, ten per cent more than the share tuned into the Scotland game.
Once again it was the biggest TV event of the weekend though the absolute average number at 622,000 was down 18,000 from the previous week.
This weekend’s peak hit 893,000, down from a high of 937,600 for the Scotland game.
In addition to these ‘big box’ numbers though, a further 192,000 live streams were delivered via the RTÉ Player. That’s a significant increase on the 127,000 from last weekend, making the overall number of viewers higher across all media.
Ireland’s remaining group games are against Russia this Thursday, followed by Samoa the following Saturday week, both with a later kick off time.
RTÉ’s coverage of the Rugby World cup is sponsored by Bank of Ireland.
