Ireland’s Rugby World Cup Pool A win over reigning World Champions South Africa in the Stade de France on Saturday night saw an average audience of 1.2 million watching on RTÉ2.

73% of those watching TV at the time were tuned-in to RTÉ2’s live coverage which peaked at 1.4 million at 9.47pm.

There were an additional 267,000 streams on RTÉ Player with 243,000 of those being live streams.

The most watched sporting event of 2022 was the All Ireland Football Final on RTÉ which attracted an average audience of 872,000.

The biggest audience for a rugby match was the France Vs Ireland clash in the Guinness Six Nations with an audience of 819,000.

In 2021 the biggest audience was 944,000 tuning in for the All Ireland Football Final with 941,000 watching the Euro 2021 Final between England and Italy, and once again the biggest rugby audience coming for the spring clash of Ireland and France with 798,000 tuning into Virgin Media One.

The largest audience of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, admittedly in an Eastern time zone was Ireland’s defeat to New Zealand which drew an audience of 766,000.

Clearly we are operating at a different level now in terms of reach and viewership, and you could say this is only the start…