Ireland France Average Viewership Breaks Million Barrier

The opening Guinness Six Nations game between France and Ireland in Paris on Friday night drew an average audience on Virgin Media of 1,067,000 viewers. That is a higher number than any Six Nations game in the last five years.

It is 22 percent higher than the 872,000 who tuned into the deciding game in last season’s Championship against England and the first time in this period that a game in the Championship has broken the million barrier.

It would have been the fourth most watched sports event here in 2022, after the three Rugby World Cup games against New Zealand, South Africa and Scotland.

Clearly, neither the team nor the fans have suffered what was feared as a hangover from last year’s French spectacle.

In addition to the TV viewing figures, there were an additional 217,000 streams on the Virgin Media Player and an unknown number on ‘dodgy boxes.’

According to the figures which are known and can be compared the game drew in 67 percent of the audience that was watching television at the time.

The figures are published and confirmed by TAM Ireland using Nielsen technology attached to a panel of Irish homeowners TV sets which are then extrapolated to give the overall figure. These are used by advertisers to determine value and as a point of comparison to other programmes and previous years as we are doing today.