How Ireland celebrated its Olympic heroes with RT

13/08/2024

Figures from RT 's extensive Olympic Games coverage show that the public took Team Ireland and the 2024 Games straight to their hearts, tuning in to RT for over 250 hours of live action across 17 days on television, radio, and online.

RT brought all the excitement and spirit of Paris 2024 to audiences, ensuring that the journey of Team Ireland's 133 athletes was captured across platforms for those at home.

On RT Player, there were 7.2 million streams of the Olympic Games from 24th July to 11th August, with the top five streams coming in for Kellie Harrington's gold medal win, Rashidat Adeleke's 400m final, Daniel Wiffin's bronze in the 1500m, Rhys McClenegan's gold win, and the 400m women's relay respectively.

On RT 2, the Top 3 most-watched events were:

Kellie Harrington winning Gold in Women's 60kg Boxing final- peak viewership of 1.4 million.

Rhasidat Adeleke placing 4th in Women's 400m peak viewership of 926,000.

Ireland placing 4th in Women's 4x400m Relay peak viewership of 910,000.

Other TV highlights for viewers in Ireland across the Games on RT 2 included Mona McSharry's bronze medal swim on Monday 29 July, which peaked at 621,000 viewers, while Fintan McCarthy and Paul O'Donovan's back-to-back Olympic-winning performance in the lightweight rowing on Friday 2 August was seen by a peak audience of 429,000.

On Saturday 3 August, a peak audience of 629,000 tuned in as gymnast Rhys McClenaghan secured gold on the pommel horse. Sunday 4 August, saw Daniel Wiffin add to his gold in the 800m Freestyle swimming with a bronze in the 1,500m Freestyle watched by a peak of 790,000.

The Olympics Opening ceremony had an average audience of 443,000 viewers (Live + Vosdal), the Closing ceremony had an average of 346,000 viewers. Yesterday's homecoming, broadcast live on RT One from O'Connell Street, welcomed the athletes back home with an average audience of over 200,000 and 43,000 streams to date on RT Player. Across the entire Games on RT television, 3.4 million* people in Ireland tuned in for at least 1 minute to watch coverage.

On social media, across RT channels (RT Sport, RT 2, RT News and RT Player, as well as the corporate channels) Olympics content garnered 90 million views with over 9.5 million engagements on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.

RT Group Head of Sport, Declan McBennett, said: Paris 2024 was a remarkable Olympic Games in every sense with truly unforgettable moments created by the largest ever Irish team. The level of engagement from the Irish public was unprecedented for the world's greatest sporting event and RT was privileged to play a part in that across all platforms.

RT Director-General Kevin Bakhurst said: From the opening ceremony to the homecoming, our job in RT was to ensure the public in Ireland could enjoy and experience all the excitement and spirit of Paris 2024, bringing every moment to our audiences, and in so doing offering a powerful national showcase for the incredible journey of Team Ireland's 133 athletes competing across a wider array of sports than ever before - on every platform, around the clock. The scale, quality and dynamism of the coverage is testament to the dedication of teams across RT , and to the unique mission of public service media in guaranteeing free-to-air access for national sporting occasions such as this. I'd like to congratulate Team Ireland on its exceptional success Team RT is proud to have played its part in your remarkable Olympic Games.

Sports fans were able to watch 14 hours per day of coverage across three daily TV programmes on RT 2 and RT Player, featuring a stellar array of expertise on Olympic sports including athletics, swimming, boxing, rowing, gymnastics, badminton, and rugby sevens.

RT delivered over 250 hours of live action from France across RT 2 and RT Player, with three live daily programmes, live coverage of the main events on RT Radio 1, RT 2FM and RT Raidi na Gaeltachta, extensive coverage via RT News, as well as a brand new RT Olympic Podcast series which was available each morning.

RT News coverage saw significant audiences tune in and log on every day of the Olympic Games to see first hand the latest news and reaction from Team Ireland, along with the major international sport headlines. RT News journalists and crews travelled all over Ireland capturing the excitement of local communities and supporters of our athletes, as the nation came together to celebrate and pay tribute across RT News platforms to their efforts in representing the country.

RT .ie and the RT News app provided up-to-the-minute action from Paris 2024, with the results, athlete profiles, exclusive highlights and video interviews, analysis from RT 's team of pundits, as well as all the breaking news from Paris.

Notes:

Images: Sportsfile /

RT

TV Figures: TAM Ireland/Nielsen

*+1 minute Cumulative Reach Total number of people who watched at least 1 minute over the course of the Games.

Figures include Live + OnDemand viewing

RT Player figures: Piano Analytics

LINK:	https://about.rte.ie/2024/08/13/how-ireland-celebrated-its-olympic-her...
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