Drawn All-Ireland football final most watched GAA event of 2016
January 12, 2017
Mayo's Cillian O'Connor celebrates scoring a late equalising point against Dublin.
©INPHO/James Crombie.
Nine of the ten most watched programmes on Irish television in 2016 were sport, with three of those being GAA matches.
The drawn All-Ireland senior football final between Dublin and Mayo was the most watched GAA event last year, attracting a total of 927,000 viewers for the fifth most watched in 2016, while the replay on October 1st placed 7th with 843,500 people watching.
The All-Ireland hurling final between Tipperary and Kilkenny came in at eighth place in a Top 10 dominated by the Republic of Ireland's run to the knock-out stages of Euro 2016. Only more people watched last month's Late, Late Toy Show than Ireland's 2-1 quarter-final defeat to tournament hosts France, which drew 1,262,400 viewers.
Martin O'Neill's side's 1-0 victory over Italy in the group stages was the third most watched programme on Irish television last year, with the team's drawn game against Sweden in the opening round not far behind in fourth.
No other GAA games ranked in the Top 20 programmes - which were all broadcast by RTE, according to the TAM Ireland/Nielsen consolidated figures.
Tweet12 of top 20 shows watched in 2016 were sports related. 3 were Mrs Brown's Boys, 2 were late late shows and 1 Room to Improve oddly enough pic.twitter.com/5gmUcBIU9r
- Padraic Geoghegan (@padraic83) January 12, 2017
