Melbourne Cup down on last year but Seven claims 300,000 people watched on live stream
The number of people who watched the Melbourne Cup on live TV went down this year with 2.068m viewers tuning into Channel Seven at 3pm.
However the broadcaster is heralding the success of its live streaming app which launched yesterday which it said had 300,000 concurrent live streams of Michelle Payne’s historic victory over the internet.
Live stream of the Melbourne Cup on @Channel 7 was the largest online event of its kind in Australia. 488K streams. https://t.co/fB3hBASwnk
— 7 News Sydney (@7NewsSydney) November 3, 2015
First, congratulations on the 300k+ Melbourne Cup streams – around 1.4% of Australia’s population.
But the readers need to be aware that the TV data provided is not the full picture. And no I am not referring to the public place and office viewing that OzTAM does not report – mainly because it is not financially vIiable to include it just for the Melbourne Cup (and similar events.
The TV data is just that of Seven Network owned entities.
For the full picture the Seven Regional numbers (i.e. Prime) need to be included. The Race averaged 816k on Prime in the Regional markets. Plus The Race was shown on Southern Cross in Tasmania (the shared second commercial FTA channel) and averaged 53k.
So all up The Race was watched live by 2.937 million people in Australian homes plus who knows how many in pubs, clubs, offices etc.
Also, the 342,675 reported is the peak minute of 15:05 (AEDT). The peak TV minute was 15:07 (AEDT) which saw 3.069 million in-home viewers.
So why the myopia in focusing on adding in the streams when you had over 900k Regional TV viewers at your fingertips? Because Seven doesn’t get the ad revenue from them?
One thing in streaming favour is that you can see ALL of the numbers watching, Not just a snapshot – like Oztam or Nielsen….
Gary, if only that were true.
In the case of the Melbourne Cup – because it is a few minutes – it probably is true.
But once you stream longer form, how do you KNOW that someone is at the device watching? A stream is a device count – not a people count. It is actually the maximum possible audience if the device is a one-person device. (If it is streamed to a TV set you may have the whole family around the set – you simply do not know).
Also, the majority of stream data is based on streams starts or streams at a point in time. It doesn’t indicate the average viewers across its duration – which is the most likely audience figure for any given minute and a proxy for planning and buying.
Question – could Clive tell us how much money he made from that stream – not cynical but if he refuses to detail or uses it as a promotion tool – maybe he should back back and do some basic maths ?