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Wimbledon delivers Seven a network share win despite viewer backlash

Seven has come under fire this morning for its coverage of day two of Wimbledon, with the network choosing to air the match between Australians Nick Kyrgios and Jordan Thompson over Ashleigh Barty’s first game at the tournament as world number one.

The match between Barty and China’s Zheng Saisai was only shown in cutaways, much to the ire of viewers, especially off the back of Seven advertising the evening’s coverage with the use of Barty’s name.

Seven was advertising its Wimbledon coverage based on the Ashleigh Barty match

But despite the backlash, the coverage gave Seven the network win, taking a 31.3% audience share thanks to 270,000 viewers tuning in to the main games and 256,000 for the late games, which aired across both Seven and multi-channel 7Two. Wimbledon was only on 7Two between 7:30pm and 11:30pm. It then switched to Seven’s primary channel.

56,000 viewers tuned in to the day two coverage on Fox Sports.

A Seven West Media spokesperson said that due to the fact Kyrgios and Thompson were already in the third set, the network made the choice to stay with the match as Barty began hers.

“Nick Kyrgios and Jordan Thompson were tied in the third set of a thrilling contest when Ash walked onto court. We screened as much of Ash’s one-sided game as we could and enabled Foxtel to broadcast it in full,” said the spokesperson.

“The massive audience ratings on 7TWO, which were comparable to a Wimbledon Final, show how engaged Aussies were in the epic five setter between Kyrgios and Thompson.”

The win was despite Nine being the most-watched primary channel for the evening with a 21.9% share.

Seven News was the most-watched program for the evening, with 1.092m metro viewers tuning in for the first half and 1.019m for the second half which airs as Today Tonight in some cities. Nine News brought in 933,000.

The Voice dipped to 790,000, but remained the most-watched entertainment program for the evening. It also took the top spot in two of the key advertising demographics, the 18-49s and 25-54s, while the top spot in the 16-39s was occupied by Ten’s Masterchef which brought in 645,000 overall.

Nine was the most-watched channel overall by the 25-54s, holding a 24.4% metro audience share. The channel also held the top spot in the 18-49s with 21.0%.

The most-watched show on ABC was the ABC News with 633,000 metro viewers, followed by 7.30 with 485,000.

House Rules brought 563,000 viewers to Seven, and 400,000 tuned in to watch Andrew Denton chat with Mr Black actor, Stephen Curry.

Todd Sampson’s Body Hack drew 304,000 to Ten, a slight increase from last week’s premiere figure of 283,000.

Behind Nine in the overall channel share, Seven held 18.5%, Ten 12.1%, and ABC 7.9%. The most-watched secondary channel was 7Two with 7.6%.

Nine’s overall network share was 28.7,% above Ten’s 18.0% and ABC’s 12.6%.

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