We are fortunate to have a media in Ireland that both reflects and drives our passion for sport in many forms.
Over the past few days, we have run a benchmark analysis over the coverage that the three main homegrown newspapers gave to sport as part of their extensive pullouts and pagination last Saturday.
It has revealed that our bias towards the ‘big three’ sports of GAA, Rugby and Football remains strong but also that our desire to increase coverage of Women’s sport still has a long way to go.
We will return to the three newspapers over occasional weekends through the year and add in analysis of other papers and online sources.
This is not a wholly scientific approach. It is a snapshot of a moment in time and there will always be quirks such as last weekend’s Super Bowl that perhaps skew the coverage in a fashion.
Nevertheless, we believe it is worth holding up a mirror so that we can see what it is that we are being nudged towards or perhaps what it is that we are demanding.
The figures relating to the coverage of Women’s sport are particularly worth noting.
There was good preview coverage of the Women’s Six Nations but on a full weekend of Allianz League, Lidl League and Littlewoods League matches across the four codes of Gaelic games, we believe it leaves a lot to be desired.
The aim by the end of 2020 is to have achieved 20 per cent coverage of Women’s sport. It has been possible elsewhere. We will have a feature on Sport for Business next week which shows just how much coverage and interest has grown in the UK and elsewhere.
The Irish Independent deserves a pass as it’s total coverage was substantially ahead of the other two.
There are other differences with that same paper leading the way on Rugby but coming in third on football.
The Irish Examiner led the way on Gaelic Games where the Irish Times trailed. The Times though led on the wider coverage given to a greater diversity of sports.
There may not be many surprises in what we found but just because it is comfortable and it is what we are used to, does not necessarily mean it is the best.
Image Credit: Sport for Business
