I thank the Chairman. I am grateful for the invitation to address members. My background is not at all in sports, including rugby. I am an academic who has been working in a media department. I publish in media, media theory and the public interest. I had some hands-on experience in policy-making as chairman of RTE in the 1990s. I want to speak up for the public interest in this debate. What has been happening suggests to me that the public interest is not being heard very loudly at all. We have been inundated with all kinds of facts and figures about the economics of the game, etc. There is a whole other story to be listened to. I want to reframe the debate a little if I can. That is very important now. The bigger context concerns our arrival in a very profit-driven system of broadcasting. I refer to multichannel television. We are moving even into a higher gear in multichannel television very soon. When we have the analogue switchover, the whole country will find itself dealing with digital television, with all the extra possibilities digital media will bring both in terms of the number of channels and how we deal with them. The power to list certain television events must be seen against that broad background.
I will give a quick overview of what I want to say. I will only take about ten minutes of the committee's time. I want to consider very briefly the question of how popular rugby is today. Many people might be shocked if they had an inside look at some of the figures. I want to present a few facts from the evidence we obtain from ratings. What is the point of getting concerned about how big rugby has become compared to soccer and GAA games? I will address the matter, one which sociologists often talk about, of social capital and the role sports play in feeding into a healthy system of such capital. I will also address the impact of listing sports events on the two broad markets of broadcasting, particularly that of television, and sports rights.
Last year's Six Nations final game between Ireland and Wales was the third most popular television programme in the whole year, reaching a 66% audience share. Having worked in television, I know getting such a share is fantastic as it comes in at slightly under 1 million viewers. This was a larger share than that of the football World Cup qualifiers and the senior All-Ireland hurling and football finals. In 2007, the Six Nations final game between Ireland and England got an even higher share, 68%, which drove the audience to over 1 million viewers. In the list of top ten programmes for 2009 across all television channels, rugby appears four times, at Nos. 2, 3, 8 and 9, respectively. Many people may not realise the size of these figures and the quiet revolution going on in audience share.
One can only conclude Six Nations events are more popular than any other sport. They energise huge sections of the population. The question arises as to whether we should treat them the same way we treat the availability of other sporting events on free-to-air television.
This is interesting but raw data nevertheless. I believe there is much more involved than individual fans simply watching a rugby game. More must be involved when rugby has these enormous viewing numbers and which generates such excitement the country basically stops. Is its role in providing for what I as a sociologist would call the national conversation? What is the fall-out after a game across, say, a kitchen table or what the Americans term water-cooler moments?
These viewers would not necessarily be as fanatical about the game as a fan but it is important for them in the national conversation. There is plenty of sociological evidence to suggest the well-being of the nation, a cohesive set of relations between people, is in question. What provides the social glue for these kinds of events? What is the role of soccer, rugby and the GAA in providing this national resonance, so needed in today's world of great social fragmentation?
There is a huge unifying potential in rugby if it is available to all. Restricting access to pay-TV would have an impact on fans, but that is not the whole story. It would have an impact on the national cultural fabric. People will argue this is woolly academic nonsense. It is not. This notion of social capital to counterbalance the increasing fragmentation in society is important. As a teacher of young people in a university I know of this fragmentation. I am ready for retirement. Next week, I will meet a new generation of students. The gaps between us as to what we can talk about are enormous. Sport is one area, however, in which the national conversation can be encouraged. It increases the trust between people.
There is a ritual and spectacle aspect to this and other forms of television. There are shared massive emotional experiences around individual events like rugby. There is the unfolding drama, the uncertain outcome and the nail-biting tension. There is also national and community pride, be it in Ireland or in Munster.
When we ask in audience research which television genres are most important to holding society together, people will overwhelmingly opt for news, current affairs and sports. Social capital is all about binding society across social class differences. There are also age, gender and, increasingly, ethnic identity differences. Sporting events, if they are listed and available to free-to-air television, have huge potential to bridge and build up trust in a society like ours that is going through massive changes.
It must be kept in mind that we are coming to the end of analogue television with the digital switchover happening soon. We have been waiting some years for this. When I was in RTE, I believed we were going to launch DTT, digital terrestrial television, as early as 1999.
