RTÉ Sport is a cross platform, integrated business division of Irish broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann, responsible for the provision of sport coverage on RTÉ Radio, RTÉ Television, and RTÉ.ie.
RTÉ Sport are in competition with TV3 Sport, TG4, Setanta Sports, Eurosport, ESPN and Sky Sports. Additional competitors include BBC Sport and ITV Sport both are widely available in the Republic and there is a considerable overlap in events such as the FIFA World Cup, Six Nations Championship and UEFA Champions League which are available to Irish viewers meaning RTÉ's exclusivity of these events is largely in name only. A prime example is the FIFA World Cup final which is available on RTÉ, the BBC and ITV within the Republic of Ireland. Despite this RTÉ still has high audience figures for these events.
The situation regarding radio sports events is similar with BBC Radio 5 Live available in Ireland on cable and satellite. It is less widely available, however, because it is not available on the FM bandwidth. Both Newstalk and Today FM are RTÉ's major rivals but aside from the Premier League available only on the aforementioned two stations, RTÉ dominates the live sporting airwaves in Ireland.
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The Premiership was RTÉ's flagship Premier League programme until 2008, when Premier Soccer Saturday was launched. The Premiership was shown on Saturday nights at 7.30pm. There were sometimes Premiership Specials which would normally be shown on a Sunday evening at 8.00pm or on a Monday night. These programmes are hosted usually by Darragh Maloney or Peter Collins with analysis mainly by Kenny Cunningham, John Giles, Ronnie Whelan, Richie Sadler, Liam Brady, Trevor Steven or Graeme Souness. The Republic of Ireland matches were shown live on the channel for UEFA Euro 2004, 2006 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2008, for all of which, they failed to qualify. Sky Sports got exclusive rights to Irish matches in the early 2000s and there were fears that National team matches couldnt be seen by fans so te government stepped in and now all Irish home and away qualifying matches have to be shown on Irish free to air tv meaning either RTE, TV3 or TG4 and have remained on RTE as well as Sky Sports.
RTÉ Sport broadcasts all the big association football tournaments. It is showing 64 live games in the 2010 FIFA World Cup and that is 200 hours of programming.[1]
These are the team of association football pundits that RTÉ Sport announced ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Apart from Ossie Ardiles, Dietmar Hamann and Kevin Kilbane, all who are making their debuts, and Liam Brady who has recently left his post assisting Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni, the rest are all regulars on RTÉ Sport's association football programming.[2] The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the ninth for both Bill O'Herlihy and George Hamilton.[3] RTE also have rights to Euro 2012 and World Cup 2014.
Presenters (usually one per game): Bill O'Herlihy, Darragh Maloney, Peter Collins, Con Murphy
Panels (usually two/three/four per game): John Giles, Eamon Dunphy, Liam Brady, Graeme Souness, Ronnie Whelan, Richie Sadlier, Denis Irwin, Ossie Ardiles, Dietmar Hamann, Kevin Kilbane
Commentators (usually two per game): Jimmy Magee, George Hamilton, Ray Houghton, Gabriel Egan, Trevor Steven, Stephen Alkin, Damien Richardson, Adrian Eames, Matt Holland
The RTÉ Sport football division has achieved cult status due to it unintentional humor that is incorporated. With the main team of Bill O'Herlihy, John Giles, Eamon Dunphy and Liam Brady usually used for Irish matches and Champions League matches with a usual big build up and long analysis afterwards which gains huge ratings.
In 1926, RTÉ broadcast the first field game in Europe. The GAA match was live on the radio, 2RN, RTÉ's predecessor. RTÉ Sport is probably the second most significant of the categories since often hundreds of thousands would watch The Sunday Game, with probably more than a million watching on the day of the All-Ireland Final.
RTÉ GAA coverage is the cornerstone of their sports coverage. RTÉ previously held the exclusive rights for television and radio in the Republic for the entirety of the Championship compromising of interprovincial games, All Ireland Qualifying games and the All Ireland Championship series. The games were also available in Northern Ireland who although able to see Ulster games on BBC Northern Ireland, did not receive the breadth of coverage as available on RTÉ. In 2008, however, TV3 won the rights to show 10 Championship games marking an end to RTÉ's exclusivity. RTÉ though remain the sole broadcaster on radio and retained the All Ireland series exclusively with 40 championship games available on television. Games are also available online at RTÉ.i.e. RTÉ also show highlights of club and National League games on their Sunday Sport banner through the winter and spring. In 2011 under a new deal BBC NI show all Ulster Championship matches mostly Live and some deferred shown in full, as well as live coverage of the All Ireland Championship if an Ulster tean is playing. TV3 show 11 matches including both All Ireland minor finals with coverage on TV3 in English and sister channel 3E in Irish.
The All Ireland Football Final traditionally attracts high ratings with it too attracting high ratings in previous years.[4]
RTÉ's championship games are broadcast through their The Sunday Game banner, for more information on their coverage see there
Among other sports, RTÉ broadcasts the following on television (usually on RTÉ Two):
RTÉ's regular radio sports programming (usually on RTÉ Radio 1, with split AM and FM wavebands if necessary) comprises:
Sports news bulletins are broadcast hourly on RTÉ 2fm under the title RTÉ Sport on 2fm.
RTÉ's coverage of sport remains popular, underlined by the fact that Ireland's Grand Slam decider versus Wales was the overall top rated programme of 2009 with a 68% share of the total audience watching television with 866,000 viewers.[5] The game was also shown on the widely available BBC One, but still ranks above other programmes exclusive to RTÉ. In 2010 RTÉ bought the rights for Celtic League rugby with TG4, BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Alba.[6]
RTE showed the Heineken Cup for many years and after the coverage was snapped up by Sky Sports in 2004, RTE still showed Live coverage until 2007 and then highlights afterwards but in 2011 TG4 took their highlights coverage of the Heineken Cup, Amlin Cup to add to their Pro 12 coverage and Rugby World Cup highlights. So as of 2011 RTE is the Home of International Rugby holding rights to the 6 Nations, Rugby World Cup and Autumn Internationals as well as the Pro 12 Live but TG4 is the Home of Club Rugby.
The Rugby World Cup returned to RTE in 2011 after an 8 year gap as the 2007 tournament was on TV3 Ireland. Their coverage was the same as TV3 in the sense they had only 13 live matches with every Irish match Live and every match from the Quarter Final onwards with Setanta holding every Live match and TG4 had lucrative daytime deffered rights meaning they can show a full re run of a match in the afternoon. RTE also broadcast highlights in primetime between 7pm and 10pm on RTE Two. Their Live coverage was presented by Tom McGurk with analysis by Conor O'Shea, Brent Pope and George Hook. Highlights were presented by Daire O'Brien who hosts their Pro 12 coverage with analysis from Victor Costello, Shane Horgan, Frankie Shehan, Leinster coach Joe Schmidt and new signing from ESPN, Ben Kay who won the World Cup in 2003 with England. RTE Commentary team consists of Hugh Cahill, Ryle Nugent, Donal Lenihan, Tony Ward, Ralph Keyes and Kurt McQuilkin. George Hamilton was supposed to be part of commentary but he had a heart attack so Darragh Maloney is instead commentating. Any highlights that did not have an RTE voiceover instead featured the World Feed, one example was in the highlights show with an England match using Sky Sports Commentators who worked for ITV in 2007, Miles Harrison and Stuart Barnes.
RTÉ holds exclusive Irish rights to live coverage of the only professional golf tournament to take place in Ireland, The Irish Open, covering everdays play Live. In 2011 they had play everyday on RTE One and Highlights on RTE Two late at night. Sky Sports also show all four days of the Irish Open live. RTÉ Radio also cover Saturday and Sunday’s action live on Saturday & Sunday Sport.
RTÉ also screen a lot of horse racing, including the Galway Races, Punchestown and Cheltenham. OB Sport is a sports programme designed to highlight games of less intererst in the country, like basketball or tennis. Sport is shown on RTÉ News as well, as it is a common past-time.
A programme for the Beijing Olympics was shown on RTÉ Two before the games, called Ireland's Olympians. RTÉ broadcast most of Ireland's candidates for the gold medal during the Olympiad, as well as the finals in which no Irish took part.
From the 1970s through to 1997, RTÉ's flagship television sports programme was Sports Stadium, which provided live football and racing coverage on Saturday afternoons along with coverage of other sports and classified football results, in a similar manner to the BBC's Grandstand or ITV's World of Sport. The programme was badly hit by the loss of live rights to Saturday afternoon Football League Division One matches after the beginning of the Premier League in 1992, and ended as part of RTÉ's revamp of Network 2 into N2 in 1997, being replaced for one year by Saturday Sports Live (which only concentrated on one single football or rugby game. Since 1998 RTÉ has not covered live sports on Saturday on a weekly basis on television, although major events such as the Six Nations Championship are still shown live.
• Radio • Television
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