NRL vs AFL: Who won TV ratings for the opening round?
The country’s two biggest football codes launched their 2024 seasons in extravagant fashion – the rugby league gambled in glitzy Vegas, while AFL embraced new territory with the first ever Sydney season opener.
Both codes enjoyed unorthodox opening rounds, with the NRL splitting theirs across two weeks and three continents. The two matches played in Vegas aired in Australia on a Sunday afternoon (March 3), and drew an average national audience of 796,000, with 1.69 million tuning in across Nine’s free-to-air broadcast and the digital stream.
Foxtel drew record crowds to the Vegas round, confirmed to Mumbrella that they were the two most-watched NRL games in the history of the Foxtel Group, across Kayo and Fox Sports, with Sea Eagles v Rabbitohs drawing a total consolidated average audience across linear and streaming of 849,000, with the Roosters v Broncos netting a total consolidated average audience across linear and streaming of 791,000.
The AFL season also launched in an offbeat manner – with a Thursday night match in Sydney and an opening round of matches in just NSW and QLD. The Thursday night Swans/Melbourne game reached an impressive 2.15 million viewers, with a average national audience of 702,000.
More people tuned into the AFL opener, while the NRL had a much larger average audience, especially when Foxtel’s ratings are entering into the soup.
During the AFL’s Thursday night opener, the NRL also drew an impressive 1.3 million viewers to its Thursday night Knights v Raiders match-up, with an average national audience of 505,000. Interestingly, neither NRL side was from Sydney, leaving the Sydneysider footy fan fairly open to the pull of the Swans match.
Seven’s national sports sales director Rob Maclean told Mumbrella that NSW and QLD are “absolutely priority markets” for 2024.
“You take a market like Queensland, the AFL on Seven last year in the Brisbane metro market grew by about 20% on the year prior,” he explains.
“Regional Queensland grew 10%. You’ve obviously had the Lions make the grand final, and set up for success over the next few years, you’ve got the Suns with a new coach on board looking to make a final. So it absolutely is a growth market.
“We recognise that, the AFL does, and that’s why we’re leaning in really hard into our strategy, as it relates to that. Obviously this new iconic round, with opening round matches exclusively in New South Wales and Queensland, is a big part of that. And also what Seven’s doing is really looking to maximise our ratings, via our prime time and main channel exposure.”
Friday night saw the AFL’s Brisbane and Carlton match, in Queensland, reach 1.99 million viewers, compared to the NRL’s Penrith/Melbourne match up’s 1.43 million – with the AFL drawing an average audience of 638,000, ahead of the NRL average of 576,000.
Saturday night was all AFL on free-to-air, with both Saturday night NRL matches airing on Fox. Seven’s coverage of the Giants and Collingwood match drew 1.71 million, with an average of 509,000.
Sunday night’s ratings won’t become available until Monday afternoon.
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