How does Leitrim’s World Cup obsession rank as kick-off approaches?
The tournament will kick off this week in Mexico City
Leitrim has been named the twelfth most World Cup-obsessed county in Ireland as the global festival of football kicks off this week.
The tournament begins on Thursday night with co-host Mexico taking on South Africa in the opening match in Mexico City.
Despite Ireland not qualifying for the World Cup finals, held across June in the US, Canada, and Mexico, interest in the competition is still high in the country.
The study, conducted by Legacy Communications, a creative Digital PR and communications agency, examined monthly Google search volumes for top World Cup terms, including "FIFA World Cup", "World Cup 2026", "how to watch World Cup" and "World Cup live stream", across all 26 counties.
They looked at how many times the search terms were used online in the area per 100,000 people and found that Leitrim fans are searching for the tournament at a rate of 739 searches per 100,000 people in the lead-up to the tournament.
Dublin was found to have shown the most interest in the tournament with 1,773 searches per 100,000 people, comfortably ahead of every other county.
Wexford ranked second in the country with 1,525 searches per 100,000, and Louth (902), Kildare (896) and Westmeath (852) rounded out the top five.
The lead-up to the tournament has been marred by controversy around ticket pricing, socio-political issues, and accessibility of the tournament for participating countries whose fans cannot travel due to bans on certain nationalities entering the US.