Sport provided five of RTÉ’s top 20 programmes in 2013

RTÉ head of sport Ryle Nugent has welcomed the audience figures for 2013, showing sports events provided 25 per cent of the station's top 20 most watched programmes for last year.

Gaelic games furnished two of the top 10, with Dublin's All-Ireland final victory against Mayo one of only four broadcasts to top the million-mark, with 1,064,200 viewers tuning in.

“You’d have to see it as heartening and recognition of the relevance of sport in the daily lives of people,” he said.

"A lot of the sports rights aren't exclusive, apart from the GAA – although TV3 have rights, we don't go head to head with them in their coverage – and we often have to go up against some of the best resourced broadcasters in the world."

There is good news for the GAA with its All-Ireland finals yet again proving the most watched sports events – a status they tend to hold apart from years when Ireland qualifies for major soccer tournaments – and the football final, which broke a million viewers for the second time in the past three years, was the third most watched broadcast of the year.

With the drawn hurling final at number six and its replay at 19, Gaelic games provided three of the five sports entries in the top 20.

Six Nations
The other two were Ireland's Six Nations defeat by England last February and the country's Fifa World Cup qualifier against Austria in March.

Nugent acknowledged the importance of Gaelic games in the schedules.

“There’s no question about that. They are the national games and you’d both expect and want it that way.

“All-Ireland finals remain the biggest events in terms of engagement with the national audience – and have been as far back as you can go.”

One surprise from the GAA’s point of view is the fall-off between the audience for the drawn hurling final and its replay. The second Clare-Cork match was the first final to be played on a Saturday night but Nugent is reluctant to leap to judgment.

“I think you’d want to be cautious before drawing that conclusion. If you’re trying to establish a trend you need to do it more than once so I wouldn’t say because of one Saturday night final, that there’s necessarily a lower audience for that time slot.

“Figures show Saturday evening sports events perform better pound for pound.

“If you show a rugby or soccer international at two or three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and at seven in the evening, I guarantee you that the later start will get a bigger audience.”

This year promises to be busy with the soccer World Cup taking place in Brazil even though Ireland won’t be present. Time difference means this summer’s tournament will be particularly viewer friendly with kick-off times at 4pm, 8pm and 11pm. This also means there will be comparatively few clashes with GAA fixtures:

“Looking at the size of audiences watching what we produce, we’d have to be happy but this is a new year and we have to look again at what we can do to continue to engage our audience,” said Nugent.

Meanwhile there was confirmation yesterday that one of football’s most iconic managers, Mick O’Dwyer, has called time on his career. Now 77, the legendary Waterville man, who won 12 All-Irelands – four as a player and eight as manager – with his own county Kerry, plus Leinster titles with Kildare and Laois, stepped down as Clare manager last year and officially declared yesterday he was now retired.

Speaking to RTÉ radio’s Seán O’Rourke, he identified his first All-Irelands as player (1959) and manager (1975) as highlights of an inter-county career that spanned nearly 60 years.

Finally, Dublin’s 2009 hurling All Star Alan McCrabbe has returned to training with the county, having missed last year due to work commitments.

As a result he missed the county’s historic Leinster championship victory but will be a welcome addition to Anthony Daly’s squad for the imminent league campaign back in Division One A.