FOOTY, be it Aussie Rules or Rugby League, dominates the Australian Sporting landscape both on TV and in the media. So how does motorsport stack up? A big weekend on the ‘box gives us a good indication.

WORDS: Richard Craill

SPORT is happening thick and fast at the moment with every major sporting competition in the country cramming the bulk of their seasons into a shorter time period than usual, thanks to the COVID-19 dramas this year.

It’s made for an incredibly cluttered and busy media landscape with the dream of ‘clear air’ regularly chased by both competitions and broadcasters alike just that for the time being.

However, the wall-to-wall sporting feast on our screens at the moment gives a chance to see who is watching what, and how they’re consuming it.

From a Motorsport perspective, Supercars, F1 and MotoGP were all in action across the weekend and we’ve already charted their respective ratings performances in our regular Ratings Watch feature here.

However outside of our own Motorsport bubble, the AFL and NRL both had large weekends while A-League, Rugby and even Super Netball drew eyeballs with varying success.

We’ve crunched the numbers across Friday, Saturday and Sunday to see who did what.

THE NUMBERS

THE AFL had a very strong weekend with their two key nationally broadcast games – Friday night and Saturday night – topping the sporting charts across the weekend.

834,000 watched Geelong smash Port Adelaide while 625,000 saw Carlton win with a kick after the siren to sink Freo in the West.

Both games were broadcast nationally on Channel 7 and Fox Footy.

An additional 189,000 watched the Geelong / Power game in regional areas on 7, taking the total to over 1 million.

The NRL has seen TV ratings slip slightly this year, potentially due to a lack of competitiveness from the Queensland teams which has the effect of diminishing audiences North of the border, especially on free-to-air.

The Eels v Dragons clash on Friday night was third of all sports on the weekend, drawing 548,000 to Nine and Fox.

Of that audience 321,000 watched on 9 and 227,000 on Fox.

In the head to head battle of Friday Night Footy; the NRL drew 10,000 more on Fox Sports than the AFL, while the latter had nearly double the free-to-air audience, at 617,000.

(The NRL drew slightly closer when regional numbers were taken into account, with an additional 236,000 watching outside of the capital cities.)

The Wests v Bulldogs NRL clash was fourth in the list (though only shown on Channel 9 in Sydney and Brisbane) while two AFL games, each with a free-to-air component, were next.

Supercars sit a very respectable seventh on the list thanks to the 286,000-strong audience who tuned in to watch the final race from Darwin on Sunday afternoon.

It was the only non footy-code contest to make the top-10 sports on Australian TV on the weekend.

Supercars tends to do well regionally, with an additional 136,000 added to that total for the final number of 422,000 – though due to an availability of data, we’re only comparing the metro audiences here.

The highest-rated contest shown purely on Subscription TV was the NRL Raiders v Broncos clash on Saturday; 278,000 watching on Fox League making it the largest STV-only audience of the weekend.

Just behind was the Melbourne v Collingwood clash at the same time over on Fox Footy, seen by 268,000, and the Cowboys v Rabbitohs game on Fox League at 263,000.

Supercars’ Race 13 just missed the top-10 in 11th overall for the weekend, with the 14th race of the season – aired at an unfashionable and typically low-rated early afternoon Sunday timeslot – just behind.

As we’ve already outlined in our Ratings Watch column, MotoGP continues to be a surprise this year with a bumper 227,000 catching all the drama from Austria on Sunday night.

Bang in prime-time, and with free-to-air coverage on 10Bold, that the bikes would finish 14th out of 26 separate contests surveyed by TV ratings agencies across the three days is impressive – especially given it airs outside of the ‘primary’ Channel 10 channel – but more on that later.

Down the list, Super Netball does surprisingly well for 9Gem while the well-publicised issues for the A-League are highlighted in their TV numbers: just 8,000 watching on Fox Sports in addition to the ABC audience.

Rugby Union, in a similar state of disarray, couldn’t crack 60,000 viewers for either contest aired on the weekend.

ANALYSIS

TV ratings are a hard thing to read this year given the fractured season and schedules and a lack of any real like-for-like, year-for-year comparison.

Broadly speaking, though, AFL is up on their 2019 numbers while the NRL audience has dropped about 5 per cent.

Supercars are tracking lower than last year as well; however remain the only sport shown on Australian TV that realistically competes with the two major footy codes.

In raw numbers, Supercars is the third-most watched Sport on Foxtel and when you add the free-to-air numbers – even soft ones from a struggling Channel 10 – it’s easily third behind the ball sports.

This bodes well for the future as the sport tries to pin down a new TV deal, expected to be with the Seven Network, for 2021 and onward.

While there’s no doubt there will be a financial haircut coming – as there has been for all sports – it’s still likely a positive for the sport as they link with a network who actually wants to promote their sporting properties on free-to-air.

Certainly, Seven will love the opportunity to cross-promote between what is currently Australia’s top-rated code and Australia’s third-most watched sport on TV during the winter.

And then they have Cricket in Summer to promote as well – which, broadly speaking, out-rates them all.

The F1 numbers seem low, but relative to their competition on Foxtel they are enormous: nothing that late at night comes close to drawing those numbers.

It will be interesting to see if 7 also go after the Australian Grand Prix in March, traditionally a high-rated weekend and the kind of premium content that would work well to lead into the AFL season.

MotoGP, however, has been the standout this year with the numbers drawn to 10Bold in the 9:30/10:00pm Sunday night time slot.

If the MotoGP numbers do anything it is prove that these days the argument of being on the ‘primary’ channel versus a ‘multichannel’ means very little, especially given the bikes are on a channel that is part of a network which on the weekend was out-rated by the ABC.

Some fans used to moan incessantly about Supercars being shunted to 7mate – but these days if you have a TV, it can get 7mate just as well as it can get the main channel. There’s literally no difference aside from the numbers you push on your remote.

The most simplistic explanation is that it’s proof that if people want to watch a product, they’ll tune in to watch it regardless of where it is shown.

Seven are clearly primed to add Supercars alongside it’s already announced ARG / Shannons Motorsport Australia coverage on 7mate next year, which will bolster an already strong channel.

In fact, on Sunday, 7mate was not only the top-rated ‘Multichannel’ on Australian TV, it shadowed the major networks closely and for motorsport fans that’s a good thing: On Sunday, Channel 10 had a paltry 7.9% of the local TV audience while 7mate was not far behind on 4.6%.

Getting on to a network with the highest sporting ratings in the country and a desire to have a stronghold on the product will surely be a good thing; mate or main.

SPORT ON AUSSIE TV – AUGUST 14-16

* 5 City Metro Audiences + STV (Foxtel) Audiences only, as reported.
* Supercars Race 14 + 15 audiences + MotoGP information, see Ratings Watch
* AFL and NRL YTD Ratings data source: @FootyIndustryAU on Twitter
* Kayo / Streaming numbers are note included