League of Ireland on TV

hognef

Is anybody aware of a list of matches to be broadcast on TV? My understanding is that Eir Sports own the rights, but I'm unable to find anything indicating what games are actually on. Any information will be greatly appreciated.

artanevilla

I'd say the intern in the Eir offices in charge hasn't been told to pick fixtures or was confused when he got the email as he didn't know there was a League of Ireland.

Eir are more focused on GAA at this time of year. And Serie A repeats.

Fann Linn

Was looking for Rovers v Dundalk tonoght.Nowhere to be found!

NIMAN

Fann Linn wrote: »

Was looking for Rovers v Dundalk tonoght.Nowhere to be found!

Yeah, massive game but no sign.

BOHtox

sugarman wrote: »

Rte have the rights to 18 games, Eir has 15.

Rte showed Dundalk v Sligo on the opening week and are planning to show

Dundalk v Cork 29/03
Cork v Shamrock 05/04
Derry v Shamrock Rovers 19/04

Eir have yet to announce what fixtures theyre showing and when.

Are Eir obliged to show 15 or have they the right to? (I.e. might they only show 2? Similarly with RTE)

I was in work relatively late with month end and wasn't able to make it down to Waterford and I've Cork away and Sligo away planned. I was dying for live football though. Dundalk and Rovers (Who both will be up there. Possibly first vs second) will have had 5000 at it. 3 stands. Shiny stadium. Good atmosphere. I feel there's a great feel-good factor around the league. Attendances are well up. I'm sure it would have been watched

I'm watching Larne vs Coleraine instead. Good pitch, nice little ground and very well attended. Actually a very good game. Coleraine are beating Larne 4-3 (5-3 as I type) away. Maybe one day there will be one league on the island. I'm well aware of the political implications but it's silly there's two.

Sky and BBC show the very odd NI game. Imagine if we got a LOI game on sky to fill the blank schedule during summer months.

artanevilla

Ryle Nugent.

artanevilla

sugarman wrote: »

Left last year, no?

His legacy lives on.

Yeah he’d prefer to put on under 16 Leitrim rugby games over any other sport.... and Rte would prefer throwing a a Vogue Williams or an Amy Hoberman show on which will last a season And give them and the like more opportunities

howiya

Jeremiah Aggressive Vehicle wrote: »

and Rte would prefer throwing a a Vogue Williams or an Amy Hoberman show on which will last a season And give them and the like more opportunities

I'd hazard a guess that more people would watch these shows than a live league game. Saw a figure of 54,000 for a game last season on foot.ie. Presumably even less watch when a game is on Eir given that it's less widely available than Rte.

The league is caught in a difficult place with regard to TV in my mind. Broadcasters aren't going to pay much (if anything) for the rights because they're not worth much to them. And as a direct result of this they're not going to prioritise coverage because they haven't invested heavily in acquiring the rights.

Both Eir and RTE chose to show different sports tonight.

Fr Tod Umptious

The LOI season is 36 games, so in theory one could say it's 36 weeks

RTE are showing 18

That's a game every two weeks on free TV.

That's not that bad.

Fr Tod Umptious

BOHtox wrote: »

Are Eir obliged to show 15 or have they the right to? (I.e. might they only show 2? Similarly with RTE)

I was in work relatively late with month end and wasn't able to make it down to Waterford and I've Cork away and Sligo away planned. I was dying for live football though. Dundalk and Rovers (Who both will be up there. Possibly first vs second) will have had 5000 at it. 3 stands. Shiny stadium. Good atmosphere. I feel there's a great feel-good factor around the league. Attendances are well up. I'm sure it would have been watched

I'm watching Larne vs Coleraine instead. Good pitch, nice little ground and very well attended. Actually a very good game. Coleraine are beating Larne 4-3 (5-3 as I type) away. Maybe one day there will be one league on the island. I'm well aware of the political implications but it's silly there's two.

Sky and BBC show the very odd NI game. Imagine if we got a LOI game on sky to fill the blank schedule during summer months.

Sky are filling the blank schedule during summer months with GAA.

It helps maintain Irish based subs during the summer and also the subs of UK based Irish people.

Not sure if LOI would give them the same.

TheCitizen

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

The LOI season is 36 games, so in theory one could say it's 36 weeks

RTE are showing 18

That's a game every two weeks on free TV.

That's not that bad.

It's not good enough. There should be at least one live LOI game available every weekend. You need consistency. Regular coverage gets people familiar with the league and hopefully, they start going to games as well. There's a social media campaign for Rovers and Bohs to be on TV I've heard, that game should be on TV and there shouldn't have to be a campaign for it.

howiya

TheCitizen wrote: »

It's not good enough. There should be at least one live LOI game available every weekend. You need consistency. Regular coverage gets people familiar with the league and hopefully, they start going to games as well. There's a social media campaign for Rovers and Bohs to be on TV I've heard, that game should be on TV and there shouldn't have to be a campaign for it.

Yeah there was a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #Putdublinderbyontv. First tweet I noticed was Sunday, although it could have started earlier. If it did only start on Sunday whoever came up with the idea didn't give it much chance of success.

It was also stupid to have the game on Monday instead of a Friday. How many Monday night games got covered last season? Three of the four Rovers Bohs games were on tv last season. All on Friday nights. Did anyone in the League office contact RTE/Eir and ask if they were good with a Monday night game? I doubt it.

I think there's a serious dose of realism needed when it comes to TV coverage of the league. You say regular coverage will promote the league. I don't disagree. What's in it for the tv companies though?

TheCitizen

howiya wrote: »

Yeah there was a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #Putdublinderbyontv. First tweet I noticed was Sunday, although it could have started earlier. If it did only start on Sunday whoever came up with the idea didn't give it much chance of success.

It was also stupid to have the game on Monday instead of a Friday. How many Monday night games got covered last season? Three of the four Rovers Bohs games were on tv last season. All on Friday nights. Did anyone in the League office contact RTE/Eir and ask if they were good with a Monday night game? I doubt it.

I think there's a serious dose of realism needed when it comes to TV coverage of the league. You say regular coverage will promote the league. I don't disagree. What's in it for the tv companies though?

What’s in it for TV companies to show netball? Or ladies Gaelic Football. The League of Ireland is a decent product it’s not getting proper TV coverage. 11:30 on a Monday night and inconsistent live games doesn’t cut it. They need to get Virgin Media on board. RTE are too stuck up their own holes to do a proper job promoting League of Ireland.

Fr Tod Umptious

TheCitizen wrote: »

What’s in it for TV companies to show netball? Or ladies Gaelic Football. The League of Ireland is a decent product it’s not getting proper TV coverage. 11:30 on a Monday night and inconsistent live games doesn’t cut it. They need to get Virgin Media on board. RTE are too stuck up their own holes to do a proper job promoting League of Ireland.

Netball is niche, as is ladies Gaelic football.
TG4 have been carrying the latter for 20+ years and it's well established with that station.

I don't know what Sky get out of netball but it must be worth their while if they continue to carry it.

LOI is not niche, it's just another soccer league in a TV landscape saturated with soccer.

OldMrBrennan83

BOHtox wrote: »

Are Eir obliged to show 15 or have they the right to? (I.e. might they only show 2? Similarly with RTE)

I was in work relatively late with month end and wasn't able to make it down to Waterford and I've Cork away and Sligo away planned. I was dying for live football though. Dundalk and Rovers (Who both will be up there. Possibly first vs second) will have had 5000 at it. 3 stands. Shiny stadium. Good atmosphere. I feel there's a great feel-good factor around the league. Attendances are well up. I'm sure it would have been watched

I'm watching Larne vs Coleraine instead. Good pitch, nice little ground and very well attended. Actually a very good game. Coleraine are beating Larne 4-3 (5-3 as I type) away. Maybe one day there will be one league on the island. I'm well aware of the political implications but it's silly there's two.

Sky and BBC show the very odd NI game. Imagine if we got a LOI game on sky to fill the blank schedule during summer months.

Why is it silly there's two? Is it silly that Portugal and Spain have different leagues too?

RTÉ have got their bit of positive publicity by 'lifting' an embargo that wasn't actually there to begin with, so they can forget about the league for a while now.

topmanamillion

To put things in perspective RTE and EIR see the League as TV filler.
I see alot of posts here that are aspirational rather than grounded in reality.

When you go to TV companies looking for then to show something on their stations you have to speak in terms of viewership. The viewership for live LOI games is floats between 30 - 60,000.

In Viewership terms it means RTE would do better putting on Father Ted or Big Bang repeats.

That's where things stand right now. It's why arguments like RTE should pay clubs to put games on TV and the league should walk away from RTE and go on Sky because look what being on sky has done for the English Premier League are just ridiculous.

The majority of LOI grounds aren't set up towards being on TV. Even the better grounds like Turners Cross, The Showgrounds and Richmond Park are extremely light on media facilities. The main TV camera is usually perched on the main stand where the majority of the fans naturally are. This means TV viewers are looking into a sparsely populated stand or worse still the back of the neighbouring housing estate. Add in the obligatory league of Ireland chip van and the pictures being beamed into living rooms around the country is farcical.

I'd echo the opinion that 30 + live LOI games across RTE and EIR is pretty good going. Its actually one area where the league is punching above its weight. Unfortunately, due to the saturation of football on TV its ability to make it pay is very limited.

howiya

TheCitizen wrote: »

What’s in it for TV companies to show netball? Or ladies Gaelic Football. The League of Ireland is a decent product it’s not getting proper TV coverage. 11:30 on a Monday night and inconsistent live games doesn’t cut it. They need to get Virgin Media on board. RTE are too stuck up their own holes to do a proper job promoting League of Ireland.

The little I know about netball is that the Hearn's and Matchroom are involved in it. It's also a sport. Sky Sports can't use filler like Young Sheldon or Vogue etc. When football rights started becoming prohibitively expensive Sky made a decision to start showing sports that hadn't featured on tv much to fill out their schedules. Enter netball.

Ladies football? The biggest day in the ladies calendar gets a bigger attendance than the biggest day of our calendar, the FAI Cup Final. TG4 were the sponsor of the championship for years. The GAA and TG4 have a shared ethos of trying to promote the Irish language. Their sponsors Lidl also spend significantly on ads. There was an SSE Airtricity ad on during today's GAA. Didn't even mention that they sponsor the league. Maybe they don't want people to know. Contrast this with the Allianz ads, the Vodafone rugby ads etc.

Why is it RTE's job to promote the league?