Armchair fans face Champions League choice

Armchair fans face Champions League choice


August 11, 2004

With all 24,000 tickets for tonight’s Uefa Champions League clash between Deportivo La Coruna and Shelbourne selling out early on Tuesday, armchair soccer fans can still watch live television coverage from Lansdowne Road – but the Irish champions will have to compete with Manchester United for the attentions of the sitting room audience.

No more tickets are available for the highest-profile match in Shelbourne’s history, vindicating the club’s decision to move it from Tolka Park to Lansdowne.

Read more at www.eleven-a-side.com

did they officially make the pitch smaller ?(landsdowne)

It's depressing to see that the capacity of Lansdowne Road is only 24,000 when
the temporary seats are taken out. I don't go to Ireland games, but I think
that if FIFA (or UEFA or whoever) hadn't of given the FAI a derogation for, it
seems, an indeterminate amount of time, we'd be heading towards getting a
stasium built all the quicker. FIFA suspending the rules only allows the FAI to drag their heels all the more.

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Originally Posted by the 12 th man

did they officially make the pitch smaller ?(landsdowne)

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Ye, it was made a bit smaller, i think its aabout the size of Tolka now

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Originally Posted by rerun

It's depressing to see that the capacity of Lansdowne Road is only 24,000 when
the temporary seats are taken out. I don't go to Ireland games, but I think
that if FIFA (or UEFA or whoever) hadn't of given the FAI a derogation for, it
seems, an indeterminate amount of time, we'd be heading towards getting a
stasium built all the quicker. FIFA suspending the rules only allows the FAI to drag their heels all the more.

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Anyone know the status of the new developement at Lansdowne. Is it waiting for planning approval or what. I would have thought that Bertie would have fast-tracked this process like he does for Rock bands playing at Slane. It must be more than 6 months ago they unveiled the plans.

A re-worked Landsdowne would have the fans too far away from the ground and apparently it's not archetechturally stable. In order words, they'll turn it into a bigger heap of **** than it is now. They should build a 60,000 seater in Athlone, how's that for de-centralisation?

Be interesting to see the viewing figures from last nights games.

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Originally Posted by pete

Be interesting to see the viewing figures from last nights games.

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I was going to start a new thread on that ...... that would make interesting reading to say the least, considering that they weren't advertising the Shels game all over the place.

Is there anyway we can get our hands on them ??

RTE put the top 10 shows from their channels on Aertel page 369 i think but will be few week delay before displayed. Dunno how can get TV3 ratings.

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Originally Posted by pete

RTE put the top 10 shows from their channels on Aertel page 369 i think but will be few week delay before displayed. Dunno how can get TV3 ratings.

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Need someone in Advertising I'd imagine. There must be people on the boards who have those connections....

I have the figures in front of me but they won't be released officially till this afternoon. What I can tell you is that RTE outperformed TV3 by almost 2 to 1 and the press release will be headed "Shelbourne beat Manchester United in Champions League" :)

KOH

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Originally Posted by WeAreRovers

I have the figures in front of me but they won't be released officially till this afternoon. What I can tell you is that RTE outperformed TV3 by almost 2 to 1 and the press release will be headed "Shelbourne beat Manchester United in Champions League" :)

KOH

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Nice one WAR ;) :D

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Originally Posted by WeAreRovers

RTE outperformed TV3 by almost 2 to 1

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Nice one! :)

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Originally Posted by WeAreRovers

"Shelbourne beat Manchester United in Champions League"

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Excellent!

I'll speculate & say that'll get it onto top 5 Network 2 shows this week at say 190k viewers...

Ratings from couple of weeks ago...

Lads - 317,000 for Shels v Depor. Fantastic figures.

KOH

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Originally Posted by WeAreRovers

Lads - 317,000 for Shels v Depor. Fantastic figures.

KOH

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Staggering numbers! I'd be surprised if many CL games over the last few years on RTE beat that by much.

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Originally Posted by WeAreRovers

Lads - 317,000 for Shels v Depor. Fantastic figures.

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About twice as many people that tuned into the 2 SFC 4th Qualifying Round games.
That's Dublin-Roscommon and Tyrone-Leitrim. 2 games ye would expect to get big viewing figures for, with Dublin's massive population, and Tyrone's massive football following.

Looking at a figure like that for last night, surely RTÉ (and advertisers) must realise that there is a market for TV coverage of the eL.

Great figures although probably be foolish be able to carry those numbers off on consistent basis.

Wouldn't be much of a stretch to suggest that irish people sick of watching the same thing that been shown on foreign channels already & want something they can't see elsewhere...?

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Originally Posted by WeAreRovers

Lads - 317,000 for Shels v Depor. Fantastic figures.

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I don't know much about ratings, but wouldn't a big national team game normally pull in around 700,000+?

To be entirely frank, I'm very disappointed so many people watched ManU.

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Originally Posted by Sheridan

I don't know much about ratings, but wouldn't a big national team game normally pull in around 700,000+?

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Would have to be massive international game like last game of qualifier to pull those numbers in.

To put in perpective 317k in or around Irish rugby international figures & 190-230k be figures for RTE Premiership highlights. For most of the year anything above 200k gets into Network 2 top 10. Looking at anpother way i;d guess RTE would barely have got half those viewing figures for whatever crap movie was scheduled.