Euro 2012 TV viewers lose the faith

Viewing figures for the Republic of Ireland’s Euro 2012 matches on RTÉ fell 25 per cent between the team’s hopeful first encounter with Croatia and its third match against Italy - by which point the team had already been knocked out of the tournament.

While travelling fans of the Irish football team sung on in the face of defeat, hundreds of thousands of armchair supporters simply switched off following the team’s elimination after a 4-0 loss to Spain on Thursday evening.

An average of 920,000 people watched RTÉ Two’s three-and-a-half hour coverage of Monday night’s 2-0 defeat to Italy, including pre- and post-match analysis and Après Match, according to TAM Ireland ratings.

This compares to an average of 1,234,500 who tuned in to watch full coverage of the Croatia match on Sunday, June 10th, and an average of 1,144,700 who watched the second match against Spain.

Despite the fall-off in average audiences, the tournament has been a hit for RTÉ, with all three matches achieving a total audience reach of more than two million viewers - this is the cumulative number of viewers who tuned in to the programme for at least one minute.

The match against Croatia was the most-watched programme on Irish television since the 1994 World Cup.

Euro 2012 has also driven viewers to RTÉ.ie, with the tournament as a whole generating 653,000 streams to date.

Après Match sketch A Message From Angela, which pokes fun at RTÉ presenter Craig Doyle, has been watched more than 100,000 times on YouTube, the broadcaster pointed out.

Aertv, which streams Irish television channels online, also reported waning interest following the Republic’s elimination, with viewer numbers dropping from 14,000 for the first two matches to 10,000 for the Italy match.