Sport and news dominate Ireland's most watched TV programmes for 2021

Fri, 10 Dec, 2021 - 12:46

Ian Mallon

Ireland's reputation as a nation of sports and news lovers grew throughout 2021, in newly released figures for the most watched television programmes of the year.

Sports dominated the country’s viewing habits with more than half of highest viewed shows featuring live sporting events.

With the exception of the Late Late Toy Show and the Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah Winfrey, sports and RTÉ’s Six One News dominate the most watched chart, compiled by Nielsen Research.

Figures compiled by Nielsen Research show that more than half of the largest television audiences for 2021 were for sports events featuring the three main staples – GAA, rugby and football – but no room at the top for Olympics.

While the All-Ireland, Six Nations and Euros dominate the top 20 for the year, a much loved and hardy annual continues to defy the record books with the Late Late Toy Show pulling in astonishing numbers.

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This year was no different to all the others with the Late Late’ coming out on top with 1.7m viewers – which accounted for around 1.5m on the night, with additional audience following the show on digital catch-up services.

A most remarkable aspect of the table comes with the viewership of RTÉ’s Six One News, where the news programme dominated the first week of the year as the country faced into a dark and uncertain post-Christmas lockdown.

All six RTÉ news programmes that appear on the list were all broadcast in the first eight days of 2021, averaging 733k per show, demonstrating a thirst for information during the darkest days of the Covid crisis.

Media Sponsorship Manager with Core Sponsorship Jane Murray said the popularity of RTÉ Six One News came at a time of great uncertainty for the nation.

“What you have with such big numbers for Six One, all coming at the same time, is that people were all at home on Christmas holidays, and they had a huge appetite for information as they faced into a significant lockdown,” she said.

From second position to fifth, sports events feature, with an average audience of 944k tuning in to see if Mayo could break their 70-year Sam Maguire duck in the All-Ireland defeat to Tyrone.

Our obsession with the England football team resulted in an average of 914.5k watching the final and semi-final games at Euro2020.

In a recent development and in line with rights holders and broadcasters wishes, Nielsen Research, divides up major sporting events into ‘Live Game’ and ‘Post Game’ programming - with the Mayo v Dublin post-match coverage in the All-Ireland semi-final reaching a greater audience than the game itself.

RTÉ’s clever move to buy the rights for the Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah Winfrey – despite its simultaneous broadcast on ITV - paid off in spades and is sixth on the chart, becoming the most watched non-live programme of 2021 on RTÉ.

Virgin Media is featured three times on the chart, with their significant 6 Nations rugby investment paying off for the independent network.

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Cork’s All-Ireland Hurling Final defeat to Limerick is tenth on the list, and demonstrates that football is preferred over hurling for mass audience.

Andy Milnes, Head of Client Services at Nielsen Sport said 2021 was a big year for sports on television, and demonstrated how viewing habits of major sporting events influence households.

“2021 was a particularly strong year (for sport) with the All Ireland Championships, Euro2020 and Six Nations taking 11 of the top 15 most watched TV programmes," said Milnes "Major sports events bring people together as an ‘appointment-to-view’ and so are watched more on the biggest screens in the house."

Interestingly amid all of the GAA, Euros and Rugby data, the Republic of Ireland football team and Ireland’s Olympic successes failed to make it inside the Nielsen Research charts.

Twenty most-watched TV programmes in Ireland in 2021: