Seven cruises to easy Friday night ratings victory thanks to AFL

Tim Burrowes

July 8, 2017 1:43

Seven cruised to its biggest ratings win of the week on Friday night, with a 23.2% share easily seeing off rival networks Nine and Ten. Nine averaged 17.4% and Ten 10.7%.

Seven Friday Night Football AFL game between the Adelaide Crows and Melbourne’s Western Bulldogs pulled in an average 264,000 viewers in Melbourne and 185,000 in Adelaide.

And Seven News was the most watched program of the night with a metro audience of 942,000. Taking in regional ratings too, this rose to 1.5m viewers nationally.

Nine News rated 904,000, according to preliminary ratings from OzTam.

Ten’s best performer was Eyewitness News at 5pm, which rated 496,000.

Meanwhile, Seven’s Sunrise narrowly won the breakfast battle, beating Nine’s Today by 282,000 metro viewers to 275,000.

Late night tennis viewers also boosted Seven’s audience, with an average of 210,000 metro viewers tuning in for Wimbledon.

Last night’s victory helped Seven come from behind to overtake Nine for weekly share. With one night left of the ratings week, Seven is now leading Nine by 19.9% to 19.4%

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.