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WHILE most sports fans are salivating at the prospect of a month of football on the box, the explosion of TV sales never materialised this year according to local and national retailers.

The World Cup normally signals a rush to get the biggest, flattest and most hi-tech TV for the feast of football, but due to Ireland not being there and the surge in TV sales prior to the digital changeover less than two years ago, there is no bonanza for dealers.

“The Saorview -or digital changeover – forced people into changing their TVs so, as a result of that, people already have a modern flat-panel in their house and that’s impacted on World Cup sales,” said Brendan Culloty of Hugh Culloty Expert in The Mall.

“In fact the brown goods market was down 40 percent last year nationwide because of this,” he said.

Over at Soundstore the story was the same.

“We’ve not seen much of an increase and any rise we have seen has more to do with a sale we’ve currently on than the World Cup,” said an employee there.

In Harvey Norman, they said Ireland’s failure to make it to Rio put paid to a boom in sales.

“They’re up a small bit, but Ireland not being in it makes a huge difference. During the Euros in 2012 we saw a massive increase,” said store employee Liam O’Dowd.

Currys, however, has seen an increase due to a special promotion they are running for the tournament.

“We’ve an offer where we’ll we refund €5 for every goal Brazil score at the World Cup, if they score 20 goals that’s €100 off,” said Conor O’Shea at the store.