Friday night’s Guinness Six Nations opening match between France and Ireland in Paris attracted an average Virgin Media audience of 1.067 million viewers. This is higher than any Six Nations match in the last five years.
This is 22 per cent more than the 872,000 who watched last season’s Championship decider against England, and the first time in this period that the one million barrier has been broken for a Championship match.
It was to be the fourth-highest-watched sporting event here in 2022, after the three Rugby World Cup matches against New Zealand, South Africa and Scotland.
Clearly, neither the team nor the fans are suffering from the hangover that was feared from last year’s French spectacle.
In addition to the TV viewing figures, there were a further 217,000 streams on Virgin Media Player and an unknown number of streams on ‘Danger Box’.
According to known comparable figures, the game attracted 67 percent of the television audience at the time.
This figure is published and verified by TAM Ireland using Nielsen technology installed on the panels of Irish homeowners’ TVs and then extrapolated to arrive at an overall figure. These are used by advertisers to determine value, as we currently do, and as a point of comparison with other programs and with previous years.
Take a look back at last year’s top 30 most-watched sports shows in Ireland.
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