AFL thriller beats NRL for viewers as finals season swings into action
Two tight preliminary finals games in the AFL and NRL delivered bumper ratings last night, with Seven’s broadcast of the thriller between the Geelong and Hawthorn edging out Nine’s Queensland derby, according to OzTam overnight metro rankings.
The AFL clash managed a a capital city audience of 775,000 for Seven’s main channel in just two states, with 594,000 in Melbourne and 180,000 in Adelaide as the Cats edged reigning champions the Hawks in a thriller. It’s average metro audience including those watching on multichannels was 1.023m.
Nine’s contentious NRL win for the Brisbane Broncos over the Gold Coast Titans managed 649,000 viewers, split evenly between Brisbane (332,000) and Sydney (317,000).
Nationally the AFL managed an average audience of 1.341m compared to the NRL’s 1.045m.
Coverage of the Paralympics also boosted Seven’s multichannels with 7Two’s broadcast In Rio Today at 8.30pm managing 134,000 capital city viewers, and 33,000 streams according to the network.
The early morning broadcasts are also getting decent traction on the multichannel boasting a 5.7% audience share between 5-11am yesterday in total people.
The AFL and NRL broadcasts were the top non-news shows on the night, which was won by Seven News with 1.037m viewers at 6pm and 975,000 at 6.30pm.
Nine News managed 846,000 at 6pm and 849,000 at 6.30pm.
The 7pm segment of The Project was Ten’s best shot with 521,000 viewers, while ABC News mustered 613,000 viewers in the same slot.
Seven took the night with a dominant 26,8% audience share, with Nine second on 17.8% and Ten lagging with 9.3%.
That win also took Seven ahead of Nine for the week with 20.7% share to 19.9%, meaning audiences for tonight’s finals clashes will decide who wins bragging rights for the week.
