Roy Keane’s late departure from ITV’s World Cup panel may have resulted in a massive drop in Irish interest in the British channel’s coverage, given the results of recent survey of Irish fans.
A pre-World Cup poll showed Keane was the pundit people were most looking forward to watching during the tournament before he decided to drop the commitment to focus on his coaching career.
48% of people surveyed chose Keane as their favourite and the Corkonian was even more popular with the ladies, with 63% of females picking the former Ireland captain.
The other ITV pundits fared badly in this survey and out of 300 survey participants; a solitary respondent chose Ian Wright as the pundit they were most looking forward to seeing.
Eamon Dunphy came out as the top RTE pundit with an 18% share of the votes, while John Giles and Dietmar Hamann received 4% apiece. 8% of people preferred to watch Alan Shearer’s punditry on the BBC and his colleague Alan Hansen emerged with 5%.
Over a third of respondents said they would avoid watching the tournament, with over half of people aged 18-24 admitting that they would not watch any of the World Cup.
Hat tip: Irish Examiner
