NRL Grand Final audience peaks at 4.6m
Last night’s NRL Grand Final match between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Canterbury Bulldogs drew an average national audience of 3.95m.
The result was well above last year’s NRL Grand Final, which drew an average of 3.3m, with last night’s audience peaking nationally at 4.65m to watch the Rabbitohs take out the premiership for the first time in 43 years.
The audience peak was well above the result garnered by last week’s AFL grand final, which drew 4.25m at its height, meaning the NRL match at ANZ stadium is likely to be the most watched TV program of 2014.
Across the five metropolitan markets the NRL had an average audience of 2.59m, a result below that of the AFL in its grand final.
However, the NRL performed strongly in regional areas with an additional 1.35m viewers meaning the average national audience was 3.95m.
The result also helped boost the audience for Nine’s reality TV show Big Brother which was screened at 10pm and had a metro audience of 867,000 viewers, well up on last week where it drew just 597,000 viewers.
On the back of its NRL coverage Nine News won comprehensively last night in the news stakes with an audience of 1.368m to Seven News’s 903,000.
A two hour episode of Seven’s talent show X Factor drew 874,000 viewers while at 8.30pm Sunday Night drew an audience of 1.014m.
Over on the ABC the third episode of political drama The Code drew 477,000 viewers. While over on Ten a new episode of Modern Family was the network’s high rating show with an audience of 436,000 viewers.
In audience share Nine dominated the night on the back of the NRL with a main channel audience share of 43.1 per cent. Seven had audience share of 24.9 per cent while Ten and the ABC had 8.5 per cent and 8.1 per cent respectively.
Nic Christensen
Didn’t SOO I & II draw higher audiences?
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No, SOO 2 drew 2.578m, SOO 1 drew 2.487m (average across the five metro markets).
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Another … that was Metro only.
Also don’t forget that the NRL was played in prime time whereas the AFL was played in the afternoon. Looking at Shares would provide a clearer picture.
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Top 3 programs for the year are all Rugby League – State of Origin 2 (4.2m), State of Origin 1 (4.1m), Grand Final (4.0m).
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NZ got 184K for the NRL GF.
AFL GF didn’t make the lists in NZ nor did it in the UK-so at was below 6K.
The NRL figures will be available next week
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