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Nine wins the week as ratings battle heats up

With Married at First Sight and My Kitchen Rules set to premiere on Monday, Seven and Nine have this week been relying on their sports coverage to draw in summer audiences.

Nine has been banking on the final few days of the Australian Open tennis tournament to deliver the ratings goods, while Seven was similarly pinning its hopes on its cricket coverage. This week, Nine emerged victorious with a 27.1% audience share on its primary channel, compared to Seven’s 16.4%. 

The most-watched show for the week – and indeed the year thus far – was the presentation following the 2019 Australian Open women’s final, which had 1.265m metro viewers, and 457,000 in the regions.

The match itself, between ultimate winner and now world number one Naomi Osaka, and challenger Petra Kvitova, had 1.171m and 399,000 in the regions.

The men’s final, between world number one and two Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, will screen on Nine tonight.

Last year’s match featuring Roger Federer and Marin Cilic had 1.730m metro viewers tune in on tennis’ former broadcaster, Seven. It was, at the time of its broadcast, the most-watched show of 2018, before it was ultimately surpassed by a Married at First Sight episode in March.

Seven, which now has the test and Big Bash cricket instead of the tennis, had a weekly share of 16.4% for its primary channel and 25.6% for the network – also behind Nine’s 36.3%.

Its most popular programs throughout the week were its news offerings.

This week, Ten managed to hold back the ABC and beat the national broadcaster with a 12.0% audience share. The I’m a Celebrity elimination which saw former host of Ten’s The Biggest Loser Ajay Rochester get the boot was the most popular show for the network, getting 797,000 metro viewers, and a combined figure of 1.104m.

Network Ten, including its multi-channels, had a 17.7% audience share.

The ABC finished the week with 9.5% for its primary channel and 13.8% for the network. SBS had 4.0% and 6.6%.

The graphs and charts below are provided by Nine and are built off OzTAM data. They exclude data for ABC and SBS. 

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