How Ireland celebrated its Olympic heroes with RTÉ

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

RTÉ 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 RTÉ 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 RTÉ2, 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 RTÉ2 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 RTÉ 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 RTÉ Player. Across the entire Games on RTÉ television, 3.4 million* people in Ireland tuned in for at least 1 minute to watch coverage.

On social media, across RTÉ channels (RTÉ Sport, RTÉ2, RTÉ News and RTÉ 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.  

RTÉ 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 RTÉ was privileged to play a part in that across all platforms.” 

RTÉ Director-General Kevin Bakhurst said: “From the opening ceremony to the homecoming, our job in RTÉ 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 RTÉ, 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 RTÉ 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 RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, featuring a stellar array of expertise on Olympic sports including athletics, swimming, boxing, rowing, gymnastics, badminton, and rugby sevens.