Without a major sporting event, 2005 was a relatively quiet sporting year globally. In Ireland, the year was dominated by our unsuccessful bid for a place in the 2006 World Cup Finals.

The most watched sporting event of the year was the All-Ireland Senior Football Final between Tyrone and Kerry in September.  In a rather unspectacular year in GAA, both All-Ireland finals in hurling and football managed to increase their viewing figures on 2004.  Ireland’s bid for a place in the world cup was also a big hit with viewers. Five of the top ten overall sporting events for 2005 were world cup qualifiers. Ireland’s final bid for a place in the world cup in October against Switzerland was watched by 20% of the population, making it the second most watched sporting event of the year, and the seventh most watched overall TV programme in Ireland in 2005.

Top TV Sporting Events Ireland 2005
Rank	Programme Name	Chn	Date	TVR	000s	Share
1	All-Ireland Senior Football Final - Kerry v Tyrone	RTE2	25-Sep	23.2	887	73.2
2	World Cup Qualifier - Ireland v Switzerland	RTE2	12-Oct	20.1	769	50
3	All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final - Cork v Galway	RTE2	11-Sep	19.0	726	73.5
4	Six Nations Rugby - Ireland v England	RTE2	27-Feb	14.7	551	54.8
5	Champion's League Final - Liverpool v AC Milan	RTE2	25-May	11.5	433	32.1
6	International Rugby - Ireland v New Zealand	RTE2	12-Nov	8.5	326	46.3
7	FA Cup - Everton v Man Utd.	BBC1	19-Feb	8.1	304	30.4
8	The Premiership Live - Man Utd v Aston Villa	RTE2	22-Jan	6.7	252	38.7
9	Heineken Cup Rugby - Munster v Castres Olympiques	RTE2	29-Oct	6.5	247	24.2
10	UEFA Super Cup Final - Liverpool v CSKA Moskow	RTE2	26-Aug	5.3	201	18.7
Source: Nielsen Media Research, Top Progs, Best Episode

Of the top overall TV sporting events, five were for world cup qualifiers, four for the GAA All-Ireland championships and one for Six Nations Rugby. However, when we take the most watched event of each sporting competition, we see the Irish sporting arena dominated by the four primary sports – GAA football and hurling, soccer and rugby. With GAA and rugby, Irish people are attracted to the local hero element, tuning in to support their county, provincial or national team, while in soccer, excluding our bid for the world cup, matches featuring top English clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester United come out tops.

Globally, the most watched TV sporting event of 2005 was the Super Bowl, with a live global cumulative audience of 93 million viewers, however 92% of these viewers were in the US, putting into question the notion of it being a “global event”. In Ireland, 12,000 viewers tuned into the event. The second most watched global sporting event was the UEFA Champion’s League Final between Liverpool and AC Milan, which was watched by 73 million people, and had a truly global spread of viewers, emerging as the most “global” of all the sporting events surveyed by Initiative Viewertrack™.  The match was the fifth biggest sporting event on Irish TV, being watched by 433,000 people.

Top TV Sporting Events Globally 2005
Rank	Sport	Event	Date	Global 000s	Irish 000s
1	American Football	Superbowl: New England Patriots v Philadelphia Eagles	06-Feb	86,000	12
2	Soccer	Champions League Final: Liverpool v AC Milan	25-May	73,000	433
3	Formula 1	Canadian Grand Prix	12-Jun	51,000	55
4	Athletics	Men's World 100 Metres Final	07-Aug	23,000	39
5	Baseball	World Series: Chicago White Sox v Houston Astros	26-Oct	22,000
6	Basketball	NBA Finals - Game 7: San Antonio v Detroit Pistons	23-Jun	20,000	2
7	Golf	US Masters Final Day	10-Apr	20,000	77
8	Cycling	Tour de France Final Stage	24-Jul	16,000	19
9	Tennis	Wimbledon Men's Singles Final: Federer v Roddick	03-Jul	12,000	87
10	Olympics	2012 Summer Games Decision	06-Jul	11,000	36
Source: Initaitive Futures Viewertrack

One of the main reasons why Initiative conducts Viewertrack™ analyses is to provide more accurate figures regarding the number of people tuning into global sporting events. The measured audience can differ greatly from the claimed audience, for example UEFA claimed that 200 million people watched the Champion’s League final, almost triple the measured TV audience.