IT WAS always going to be the most-watched sport on TV this week; but just how many tuned in to the first round of the BP Supercars All Star series?

THE first round of Supercars’ 10-event eSeries launched on Wednesday night – quite successfully, as it turned out.

70,000 watched the live broadcast on Fox Sports 506, making it the fifth-most watched show on Subscription TV and the only Fox Sports product in the top-20 shows.

The broadcast peaked at 103,000 viewers, with a total audience of more than 158,000 watching on 506.

Here’s the context: Supercars’ races on Fox Sports averaged 160,000 people last year, while Friday practice sessions shown live on the network averaged a tad over 50,000.

Interestingly, the Supercars eSeries TV audience (44% of an average Supercars race) mirrors almost exactly the numbers seen from IndyCar and NASCAR online races in the United States; RACER.com reporting that the average audience for their eSeries events broadcast on the NBC Sports Network was approximately 40% of the average audience for ‘real’ races on the same network.

However the real strength of Supercars’ eSports product is the multiple channels available for fans to engage with it; and it’s here where the number grows substantially.

Streaming service Twitch carried the race live on Supercars’ own channel, and had an average audience of 6,500 viewing live for the entire duration.

Similarly, Scott McLaughlin’s own personal Twitch account had 5,500 people watching live from an hour before the broadcast right through to the conclusion. Extra accounts from Scott Pye, Anton de Pasquale and others took the live Twitch audience to greater heights.

Supercars confirmed that more than 210,000 watched the race live on the various digital channels.

The race was streamed live on Facebook, too: At 10AM on Thursday morning, the live video had been viewed more than 330,000 times.

The racing was also shown on Kayo and 10Play, neither who release broadcast figures.

Certainly, the numbers are more than large enough that sponsors will breath a sigh of relief that they will continue to receive value from their branding exercises, at the very least, during this period.

Importantly, social engagement was off the charts: #VASC was the number one trending topic on Twitter throughout the entire broadcast.

Ratings Watch Archive – Click Here

SOURCES: TV Tonight, Mediaweek, TV Black Box.

(NOTE: Numbers are overnight metro (5 capital city) and Foxtel ratings supplied by ratings agency OzTam to media outlets. They do not include any additional reporting, including time shifted content, regional ratings or broader reach, unless released and freely available. They also do not include streaming numbers on Kayo or SuperView, etc).