Opinion: Why League of Ireland’s European matches should be on our screens

Back in August, as the row over the lack of live, free-to-air coverage of LOI sides' European exploits was at its height, the Sunday Independent published a harshly worded attempt to strike down the complaints of Shamrock Rovers CEO John Martin and St Patrick’s Athletic manager Stephen Kenny by regular columnist Eamonn Sweeney.

Regrettably, the piece was a particularly egregious example of how selectively chosen statistics can be applied in an even more selective manner.

The two main planks of the article were that the League of Ireland ‘doesn’t cut the mustard’ when it comes to TV viewing figures and, in any case, as far as Ireland is concerned, ‘the “people” aren’t watching “the people’s game,” they’re watching rugby, Gaelic football and hurling. Some of them are even watching ice hockey.

These facts, that League of Ireland football’s pulling power is limited and that football isn’t that popular in this country anyway, were designed to strike down any argument that Irish clubs' summer journeys through UEFA competitions deserve to be on the nation’s TV screens.

The reasons cited in support of football’s supposed unpopularity in our green and misty isle were mainly connected to the popularity of other sports.

Rugby ‘accounted for 11 of the 13 top-rated sports programmes [in Ireland in 2023], and over half of those in the top 50,’ 344,000 watched the National Hurling League game between Cork and Kilkenny, and last November’s Connacht [Gaelic] football semi-final between Corofin and Ballina drew 93,000 viewers.

However, 2023 was an exceptional year for Irish rugby, with the Irish men’s national team topping the world rankings and a World Cup taking place in Europe.

Football accounted for seven of the sports programmes in the top fifty without either of these advantages; hurling had only five. In 2022, football accounted for 14 of the sports programmes in Ireland’s top 50 most-watched.

The Men’s World Cup final was watched by more Irish people than any other sporting event, apart from the two All-Ireland finals and the Irish rugby team’s Six Nations match against France.

Furthermore, as David Sneyd revealed subsequently, the Shamrock Rovers vs Breidablik match in 2023 attracted more viewers than Corofin versus Ballina. So, if RTÉ showed that…

The popularity of the League of Ireland was called into question because the Belfast Giants ice hockey team’s average crowd in the UK’s ice hockey league is, at 6,799, higher than Shamrock Rovers’ average attendance in the LOI.

Furthermore, the average Premier Division crowd was 1,000 fewer than the crowd at Leitrim vs Sligo in the Connacht Senior Men’s Championship and compared unfavourably with ‘most county finals,’ Ulster Rugby’s average URC crowd of 13,227, and the 8,400 who attended the under-20 rugby team’s season opener against Scotland.

These are all indisputable facts. But they are ridiculous in the context in which they are being deployed. Shamrock Rovers are one of dozens of professional or semi-professional football clubs in Ireland.

Belfast Giants are our only ice hockey franchise. It is inappropriate to compare the Premier Division’s average crowd, calculated across 180 games, with a one-off clash between Sligo and Leitrim or even the few dozen county finals that matter (even if the strength of GAA attendances should be respected).

The numbers that throng into Ravenhill on match day are impressive, but they are smaller than the combined total of the crowds watching professional football in Ulster (i.e. the average crowds of Finn Harps, Derry City, and all NIFL clubs added together). And a crowd of 9,600 was present in Tallaght Stadium for the visit of Sparta Prague, so if RTÉ shows games against foreign opponents that attract 8,400…

The article also defended RTÉ’s failure to show LOI teams in Europe on the basis of the number of commitments that our national broadcaster has when compared to their colleagues in other countries.

This was in response to John Martin’s complaint that the national broadcasters of the Hoops’ various opponents had been happy to show UEFA qualification games in recent weeks, while RTÉ had not.

Neither I nor Mr Sweeney know enough about Icelandic, Czech, Slovene, or Greek society to offer any serious analysis of this point, so I should probably move on.

However, Sweeney’s assertion that football is "pretty much the only game in town attendance-wise" in Czechia, because that nation’s national ice hockey league has an average crowd of 5,500, is a little odd given that the average for Czech football’s top division is just over 6,400.

Furthermore, it is, of course, absurd to deploy averages in such a simplistic manner. The fact that ice hockey teams play 52 games a year compared to football teams’ 35 suggests that football is less dominant in Czechia than some seem to imagine.

And still, the Czech national broadcaster finds the resources to show its champions in the Champions League. .

Sweeney’s piece also poured scorn on the fact that horse racing ‘gets criticised for being of limited interest’ – presumably by LOI people and the football community more broadly. But this is an exaggeration.

LOI fans' criticism of horse racing is simply this: given that 40% of bets are placed on football, and Horse Racing Ireland’s own figures show that the aggregate attendance at race meetings in Ireland is 1.2 million every year, while the aggregate attendance at professional football is 1.1 million, the situation whereby betting taxes are used to support a fund that exclusively supports the ‘horse racing industry’ to the tune of tens of millions, most of which goes on prize money, is unjust and unjustifiable.

One of the major holes in Sweeney’s column was that it chose a selective line of attack. The issues of the League of Ireland and football’s overall popularity are, in some ways, distinct from that of why Irish clubs’ European qualifiers deserve to be shown live on TV. The sporting public can relate to Irish teams in international competitions—be they representative or club sides.

Our U21 men’s national team gets a lot more attention than its UK equivalents. In 2020, Shamrock Rovers' game against AC Milan had very respectable viewing figures.

The fact that RTÉ tries to ignore European games contributes to a feeling that their coverage of the game in this country is being set up to fail.

In 2012, when the LOI’s Champions League representatives were a Shamrock Rovers squad who had qualified for the previous season’s Europa League group stages, RTÉ chose to ignore the Hoops’ UCL qualifier against Ekranas of Lithuania but showed their home game against Bray Wanderers on the Friday between the two legs. That is just one example of dozens across the decades.

Another of the article’s claims, that broadcasters are right to snub LOI clubs' recent European campaigns because their opponents lack ‘pulling power,’ is also not reasonable.

Aviron Bayonnais and Zebre Parma are hardly massive names in this country, but RTÉ seems happy to show them. The same argument could be applied to the Latvian U21 international football team. Sparta Prague’s lack of ‘pulling power’ in this country did not seem to be an issue for Irish broadcasters last week, as their game against Red Bull Salzburg was carried in full.

RTÉ failed to show the LOI Champions in the Champions League qualifiers but showed the champions of Switzerland and Turkey. Teams from the Swiss and Turkish leagues have been deemed unworthy of coverage when they were playing Shelbourne and St Patrick’s Athletic in other UEFA competitions, let it be noted.

Again, thanks to David Sneyd’s research, we know that the viewing figures for these games do not generally match those of LOI clubs’ big European matches.

Historically, RTÉ, in defiance of its mission as a national broadcaster, played a huge role in the ascent of English football in the twenty-six counties. This is not the fault of Declan McBennett or anyone who works there now, but it is worth noting.

Prior to the rise of Sky and the Premier League, there was more live English football on Irish TV than on English TV. RTÉ showed the FA Cup final live from London in 1964 before it had ever shown an FAI Cup final live from Dublin.

Since those days, RTÉ has helped Irish rugby and the GAA develop themselves. It has also helped the Irish public follow their representatives in the Olympics and many other international competitions.

The national broadcaster, along with Virgin Media, has pumped European club football into our homes for decades. In a situation where RTÉ regularly shows European club football, regularly shows LOI football, and regularly shows Irish sportspeople in international competitions, it is not unreasonable that they be asked to promote the Irish football industry by showing Ireland’s representatives in the UEFA Champions League and other club competitions.

Sweeney’s article was critical of Stephen Kenny’s comment that ‘it’s not just sheer economics’ that causes Irish football to be excluded from TV. But was the St Pat's manager’s claim any different from one Sweeney himself made in his 1997 book about being a Sligo Rovers fan: ‘the League of Ireland struggled for years to get five minutes a week coverage on RTÉ television. When the All Ireland Rugby League [sic] came on the scene, every Saturday saw fifty-minute chunks of games between the likes of St. Mary’s, Blackrock College, and Cork Constitution being broadcast. The crowds at the rugby games were no bigger than those at the League of Ireland matches, but the bigwigs at RTÉ could see why St. Mary’s versus Blackrock College was important. The appeal of Sligo Rovers against Derry City was far more mysterious.’

Sweeney’s 1997 observation about the coverage of AIL rugby was accurate for the time. If his book had been written later, it might have discussed how rugby in Ireland managed to lift itself up by its bootstraps through its professional teams being seen to represent the country well in European competitions.

RTÉ and TG4 facilitated this process by showing the Irish provinces in action, allowing them to build their brand. Part of the point being made by Stephen Kenny and John Martin is that the Irish football industry needs a helping hand sometimes.

Thankfully, RTÉ and TG4 seem to be happy to give women’s football in this country a leg up - perhaps this generosity could be extended?