Ray D'Arcy

But of course, the 1.2 million isn't actually 1.2 million.

It's just a headline grabber statistic.

You always have to read further.

That's a bit of advice from Uncle Ray.

Anyway, so seemingly there were 318,000 unique Irish IP addresses used to watch Champions League, although it was free to air on RTE.

So you have to ask the question, it's there free?

You don't have to break the law.

You don't have to watch it on your dodgy box.

So why are 318,000 people going to the dodgy box to watch it, the Champions League final last Saturday?

Well, the people who know say it was a daytime match.

So audiences are out and about with families or working.

So they find it easier to access an illegal stream on their phone than legal free-to-air services.

because the legal free-to-air services, which often require a registered account and password.

Not a great ad for the RT player there, is it?

Also, and this is important and serious, that they say there's a dark nexus has existed between illegal streaming and unregulated gambling, both of which are forms of organised crime.

So you go to your dodgy box and you can watch it and you can bet at the same time is what they're saying.

And then they're also saying that 1.2 million as opposed to 318,000 figures show more than one view per computer, if you like, or mobile phone because of issues such as streams failing, users hopping between illegal streaming sites, viewers switching between tabs and advertisers on the sites forcing audiences to refresh the page.

So that's interesting.

But it's not as interesting as the 1.2 million headline suggests when you read into it.

We didn't watch Love Island last night.