NRL returns to screens with 524,000 viewers
The first round of the 2019 NRL season screened on Nine last night, with 524,000 metro viewers tuning in, according to OzTAM’s preliminary overnight ratings.
Despite the match featuring Melbourne’s Storm and Brisbane’s Broncos, its largest audience came from Sydney, where 246,000 tuned in.
The moment that earned the ire of the commentators… ?#NRL #NRLStormBroncos #9WWOS https://t.co/fcon2t7n1D
— Wide World of Sports (@wwos) March 14, 2019
In Brisbane, the audience was 212,000. The match screened on multi-channel 9Gem in Melbourne, with 48,000 tuning in.
The NRL managed to beat Seven’s entertainment offering of Home and Away (524,000), and Ten’s Show Me The Movie (326,000).
Later on, however, Ten’s Gogglebox took the lead, with 645,000 tuning in in the five capital cities. Across the country, 917,000 watched Gogglebox, while 849,000 viewed the NRL.
The most-watched program across the night was Seven News, which attracted 925,000 metro viewers and 1.428m across the country.
Nine News had 844,000 in the cities and 1.097m in total.
In the breakfast battle, Seven’s Sunrise was also victorious with 261,000 metro viewers, and 440,000 with the addition of regional figures. Nine’s Today was once again below the 200,000 metro viewer mark at 197,000, which climbed to 288,000 when the regions were included.
ABC’s News Breakfast had 116,000 on average across the cities and 182,000 in total.
Overall, Nine secured a win on the primary channel level, while Seven took out the network battle.
Nine had a 20.6% audience share, compared to Seven’s 18.3%, Ten’s 13.4%, ABC’s 10.9% and SBS’ 4.4%.
7mate, however, had a 4.1% audience share, which, combined with Seven’s other multi-channels 7Two (3.2%), 7Flix (2.7%) and 7Food (1.4%), helped the Seven Network to a 29.6% audience share, ahead of Nine Network’s 28.2%.
Network Ten had 19.0% of the audience, while the ABC finished on 16.2%, and SBS on 6.9%.
