RATINGS WATCH: AUSTRIAN GP
A STRONG audience watched the return of Formula 1 racing on Sunday night, as Austria delivered a wild start to the delayed 2020 World Championship.
WORDS: Richard Craill IMAGE: Renault F1 Team Media
THE DRAMATIC Austrian Grand Prix was viewed by an average audience of 111,000 on Fox Sports 506, the seventh-most watched show on Subscription TV in Australia on Sunday night.
Earlier, 58,000 watched the pre-race show, while 78,000 checked out qualifying on Saturday evening.
As always, Kayo streaming numbers are not available.
The Austrian GP audience is almost identical to the average Formula 1 Audience throughout the 2019 season (112,000) on Fox but larger than the average audience watching the European races last year.
Generally starting at 11pm Australian Eastern time, last year an average of 106,000 watched the European races (races that begun at or around 11pm AEST) on a Sunday night.
Formula 1 ratings dipped nine per cent on Fox Sports last year, with 13 of the 21 races drawing a smaller audience than the equivalent race in 2018 – possibly a result of Aussie hero Daniel Ricciardo moving to the far less competitive Renault team at the beginning of last season.
F1’s largest audience for a European race across the last two seasons was 177,000 for the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, though 185,000 watched the Singapore race in a similar, if slightly earlier, time-slot the same year.
In 2019, 162,000 watched Singapore while the Russian GP drew 143,000.
188,000 watched the 2019 Chinese Grand Prix in 2019, shown on a Sunday afternoon / early evening in Australia.
The 2019 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne was seen by a Fox Sports-record F1 audience of 290,000, up from 279,000 the year prior.
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).
Richard Craill (administrator)
Working full time in the motorsport industry since 2004, Richard has established himself within the group of Australia’s core motorsport broadcasters, covering the support card at the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix for Channel 10, the Bathurst 12 Hour for Channel 7 and Porsche Carrera Cup & Touring Car Masters for FOX Sports’ Supercars coverage. Pretends to be a PR guy / Journalist and sometimes photographer to make ends meet when not yelling at a television in a padded room.
