Australian Open day one vs BBL cricket: Who won the ratings?
As the “record-breaking audiences” for the recent Australia v India test series have shown of late, Australians love watching Australians play sport – especially when it’s hot out.
Sunday saw sports lovers faced with the choice of both the opening day of the Australian Open, the Women’s Ashes, and the evening’s BBL matchup between the Melbourne Renegades and Melbourne Stars.
Which did they choose? The cricket? The tennis? Both?
Seven is claiming the victory for the BBL match, sending out a celebratory press release that exclaims the Big Bash League’s reach of 2.12 million during last night’s game (the amount of people who tuned in for at least one minute throughout, or just 15sec on BVOD) was a “bigger total TV audience than Australian Open”.
This is true, to a point.
The BBL won its time slot comfortably, with its 2.12 million reach well ahead of the Australian Open’s first night session’s audience of 1.71 million.
More crucially, the cricket’s average audience at any given point throughout the game was also higher than the tennis: 643,000 v. 530,000 – however the Australian Open’s day session reached 2.29 million viewers, the highest-rating show of the day – even if the average viewership across the day was only hovering at 347,000.
In addition, both the day and night sessions on 9Gem were among the top 20 shows of the day, with an additional 725,000 and 661,000 people channel-hopping during the breaks. (These additional viewers will then be sold to the advertisers whose commercials these channel-hoppers are dodging – and so it goes.)
The Women’s Ashes also compelled 1.22 million to tune into its first session (with an average of 309,000), with average audiences actually rising to 400,000 for the second session, despite the overall reach falling to 849,000.
Seven Network’s director of sport, Chris Jones touted “record-breaking audiences for the Big Bash League, Women’s Ashes and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy” so far this summer.
“As we embark on an epic run home towards the BBL Finals, while also watching our nation’s most loved sports team – the Australian women’s cricket team – face England in the Ashes, the action is only going to heat up.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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