The retirement bout of iconic boxing world champion Katie Taylor drew a strong TV audience in her native Ireland on public-service network RTÉ.
Hosted at the iconic Croke Park stadium in Dublin, Taylor's last fight averaged 973,000 viewers on RTÉ, a 74% share of the overall available viewing audience in the country.
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Linear viewership was supplemented by a further 552,000 streams on the RTÉ Player OTT streaming service.
Headlined by Taylor’s retirement bout, a unanimous decision win over IBO super lightweight champion Flora Pili, viewership peaked at 1.6 million for Taylor’s defense of her WBO, WBA, IBF and Ring Magazine super lightweight titles, through which she also won the IBO and WBC super lightweight titles, retiring with six belts.
By comparison, the most recent editions of the annual All-Ireland hurling and Gaelic football finals, the biggest showcases of sport in the country each year, peaked at around 862,000 and 1.1 million respectively, falling far short of the draw of Taylor’s retirement, illustrating the major pull of the event, as well as the attraction to the rare spectacle of boxing presented on free-to-air television.
Speaking on the strong figures, RTÉ director of video Steve Carson commented: “On a historic Saturday night, Irish audiences came together in huge numbers to celebrate the extraordinary career of an Irish sporting icon. Katie Taylor's final victory was a national moment that will be remembered for many years to come.
"RTÉ Sport felt it was important to be able to bring live coverage from Croke Park to viewers and listeners, free-to-air, right across the country."
Strong viewership is a major boon to the event's sponsors, primarily grocery store chain Lidl (which held primary sponsorship rights across the ring), which will have drawn bumper media value from its sponsorship fee.
Rights to the fight were sub-licensed to RTÉ by global streaming service DAZN, which it held through its global streaming agreement with Taylor’s promoter Matchroom Sport, which extended its exclusive streaming agreement with DAZN back in February.
Matchroom Sport and DAZN have collectively notched over 150 million social media impressions and 95 million digital video views since the event began, meanwhile.
The fight also performed well on the attendance front, with more than 82,000 fans in attendance at Croke Park, making it the best-attended women’s boxing headliner ever, whilst also becoming the sixth best-attended post-war boxing card.
It was the first boxing card held at Croke Park since 1971.
