Seven’s Ultimate Tag launches to 447,000 metro viewers
Seven’s newest show, Ultimate Tag, premiered to 447,000 capital city viewers last night, behind Ten’s The Amazing Race on 461,000 and Married at First Sight’s first commitment ceremony, which topped the night for Nine on 945,000.
Ultimate Tag – a game of tag featuring professional parkour competitors, sprinters, gymnasts, and martial arts athletes – launched to far less fanfare than Seven’s Holey Moley. The latter show began in February to 983,000 metro viewers after a comprehensive promotional campaign, but experienced steady decline throughout the rest of its season.
Australian athlete Matt Shirvington, who commentated Holey Moley alongside US comedian Rob Riggle, is also the host of Ultimate Tag with Abbey Gelmi. Like Holey Moley, Ultimate Tag is also a US import; the format originally premiered last year in America.
The launch episode wasn’t enough to close the gap with Nine, which won the evening with a commanding 34.6% network share. Seven had 23.9%, Ten 17.6%, the ABC 15.9%, and SBS 8%. Ten Bold’s 3.8% led the multi-channels.
Nine’s Married at First Sight also dominated across all three key advertising demographics – its 945,000 metro viewers beat out Seven News (846,000) and Nine News (783,000). 60 Minutes ran directly after MAFS, and also performed strongly with an average audience across the five capital cities of 722,000.
After Ultimate Tag wrapped up at 8:40pm – it began at 7pm, the same time as MAFS – Seven aired the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service to 281,000 metro viewers.
Nationally, MAFS secured 1.251 million viewers, and Ultimate Tag snuck ahead of The Amazing Race with a total average audience of 731,000 versus 639,000.
Nine also won the week with a share of 30.6%, ahead of Seven’s 25.1%, the ABC’s 19% and Ten’s 17.1%. All four of last week’s MAFS episodes, appeared in the top 10 shows of the week – led by Monday’s episode, the most-watched metro program of the week with 1.022 million capital city viewers – along with four segments of Seven News and two of Nine News.
Notably, the first episode of Nine’s Under Investigation with Liz Hayes, an episode of the ABC’s Death in Paradise, and Australian Story also made it into the week’s national top 20.
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Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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