Sky, ABC, Nine or Seven: Who won the debate ratings battle?
Australians were treated to four televised election debates within less than three weeks, ahead of the vote this weekend. The winner of this four-way network tussle proved the commercial imperative for political programming is alive and well.
The first debate took place on Tuesday April 8 in Western Sydney, and aired on Sky News on Foxtel, as well as across Sky News Regional.
The latter is a free-to-air channel, broadcast in 17 of SCA’s regional markets in Victoria, NSW, and QLD, as well as through WIN’s Channel 53 on Northern NSW.
Sky News has claimed the debate was the most-watched program ever on its regional channels, netting 210,000 viewers across the three states.
A further 200,000 tuned in on Foxtel, making for a total audience of 410,000. Not too surprisingly, the debate has been the most-watched Sky News show on Foxtel for 2025.
Albanese and Dutton on the ABC.
The next debate took place on Wednesday, April 16 and aired on the ABC. This marked the first in-studio federal election debate the broadcaster has hosted since 1993. It drew a total TV audience of 1.77 million (the total amount of people who dipped in for at least 60 seconds on linear TV, and 15 sec on streaming), and an average audience of 1.01 million. Of these, 64,000 tuned in through ABC iview.
The nation waited less than a week for the third debate, this time airing on Nine, on Tuesday April 22.
This was the big ratings drawcard, pulling a total audience of 2.13 million, with an average audience throughout of 1.1 million. 93,000 viewers chose to watch through 9Now, the network’s streaming service. This means that Nine won the debate ratings on every metric: total reach, average audience, and digital viewing.
The audiences held up nicely throughout the network’s post-debate analysis special, too, with an average of 962,000 people watching, and the show reaching 1.38 million in total.
Sunday night saw Seven air ‘The Final Showdown’, as it dubbed its coverage of the fourth debate.
Perhaps voter fatigue had set in by Sunday — or perhaps its an indication of the record-breaking 2.4 million Australians who have cast early votes — but just 1.68 million people gave the debate more than 60 seconds, with average audiences of 973,000. This was the lowest-rating of the three free-to-air debates.
Seven’s post-analysis drew 1.4 million, with an average of 733,000 watching at any given point. Nine also cheekily ran their own election special parsing the Seven debate, which pulled 901,000 people, with an average of 271,000.
The Pope’s funeral, on Saturday, beat all four debates, drawing 1.49 million viewers on Seven, and a further 839,000 on ABC.
Given the length of the program, its average audiences were lower, sitting at just 388,000 on Seven, and 235,000 on the ABC – but over 2.3 million people tuned in at some point during the broadcast, across both channels.
Religion, death, and politics – not great dinner party fodder, but excellent at propping up TV ratings.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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