Rugby League World Cup gifts Seven Friday night ratings win
Seven’s broadcast of the opening match of the Rugby League World Cup helped the free-to-air channel dominate the ratings on Friday night.
Rival network Nine holds the rights to domestic rugby league matches, but Seven will live broadcast all 28 games of the World Cup.
The Australian Kangaroos were victorious over England 18 to 4 and according to OzTAM’s overnight preliminary metro ratings 954,000 people across the five capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth) tuned in for the post-match presentation. Slightly fewer – 847,000 – watched the match itself, according to the ratings. The pre-match programming had 471,000.
Across the country – including broadcast on regional affiliate stations – the post-match presentation and wrap-up for the Rugby World Cup had 1.443m. The match itself had 1.327m and the lead up to the match had 784,000.
Match Highlights from the @Kangaroos win over @England_RL.#RLWC2017#AUSvENG pic.twitter.com/zCTI8G10ZB
— RLWC2017 (@RLWC2017) October 27, 2017
The World Cup, combined with Seven’s regular news and current affairs programming, gave the channel a winning metro share of 25.4%. Nine was in second place (14.1%), narrowly ahead of Ten (13.9%). ABC – which has just announced a rebrand of its digital channel ABC2 to ABC Comedy – had an 11.6% share. SBS had 4.8% of the metro audience for the evening.
Nine’s strongest performing programs for the night came from its news and current affairs department – Nine News’ first half hour had 778,000 metro viewers (behind Seven News’ 807,000) and its second half hour pulled 721,000 (ahead of Seven News/Today Tonight’s 631,000). A Current Affair had 531,000.
Nine’s entertainment line-up had lower numbers, with its most-watched non-news program Hot Seat having just 420,000.
Ten’s most-watched program was The Living Room with 511,000. The second half hour of The Project at 7:00pm – traditionally the more successful segment of the program – had 507,000, compared to the 6:30pm slot which had just 359,000.
The most-watched program on the networks’ multi-channel offerings was Shaun the Sheep on ABC2/ABC KIDS which had 205,000.
topics
2017 Rugby League World Cup
ABC
Friday TV ratings
Nine
SBS
Seven
television
Ten
TV
TV ratings
