THE BALANCE between traditional and digital consumption of the BP Supercars AllStar eSeries has grown in an improved fifth round of the series last night.

WORDS: Richard Craill IMAGE: Getty Images / Clive Rose

While Fox Sports 506 reclaimed some of the ground it lost last week, Digital numbers improved significantly as the Supercars stream appeared to big numbers on both Twitch and YouTube, as well as the traditional Facebook stream.

Lando Norris also came with an enormous Twitch follower base which helped that platform to its biggest numbers yet.

FOX SPORTS COVERAGE: WEEK BY WEEK

Week 1: 70,000
Week 2: 74,000
Week 3: 76,000
Week 4: 44,000
Week 5: 50,000
(Average audience watching on Fox Sports 506)

While not returning to the heights of the first three weeks, 6,000 more tuned into the live coverage on 506 last night, helping the Supercars coverage become the sixth most-watched show on Pay TV on Wednesday.

The Qualifying show did not make the top-20 shows on Subscription TV last night.

FACEBOOK LIVE STREAM: WEEK BY WEEK

Week 1: 330,000
Week 2: 604,000
Week 3: 353,000
Week 4: 250,000
Week 5: 277,000
(Facebook live video, Supercars Facebook page, 10AM following morning)

FACEBOOK was also up on the week 4 season low when comparing our regular like-for-like ’10am the morning after’ numbers on the VASC Facebook page.

However Supercars streaming efforts were redoubled last night with strong results.

After going MIA for a few weeks, Twitch returned last week but the official Supercars feed there saw much improved numbers there last night – we saw it peak at approximately 4500 live viewers.

Scott McLaughlin’s twitch feed was popular again and peaked at more than 5,000 while Lando’s was more than double that – we saw more than 13,500 at one point – proving his worth as a wildcard.

We’re now following everyone VASC-related on twitch and at it’s peak more than 28,000 were watching concurrently via the platform.

The racing was also streamed on YouTube for the first time last night and that proved hugely successful, too; the stream having attracted 13,000 viewers at the conclusion of the broadcast last night – overtaking every single race replay the series had uploaded onto their channel for the last four weeks in one night.

The increase in digital numbers goes a long way to balancing the dip in traiditonal TV numbers in the last two weeks as fans embrace new (free..) ways of watching the eSeries action.

As always, numbers for Kayo, 10Play and other streaming outlets are not available.

This post will update as further information becomes available.

Ratings Watch Archive – Click Here

SOURCES: TV Tonight, Mediaweek, TV Black Box, Twitter, Facebook.

(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).