THE AFL GRAND FINAL numbers on Channel 7 will have Supercars frothing at the mouth to return to Australia’s most-watched TV network in 2020. Plus – Ratings from the Portuguese Grand Prix.

WORDS: Richard Craill IMAGE: Renault Sport Media

MOTOR RACING viewers are a hardly lot, proven by the number of people who remained awake to watch the entertaining (first half, anyway) Portuguese Grand Prix on Fox Sports last night.

While the 68,000 total audience was comfortably the smallest of the year to date, it’s not a surprise given the fact that in the major markets, the race started well beyond midnight.

F1 fans will be relieved when F1 returns to Imola next weekend: the race set to start just past 11pm AEDT as per most ‘normal’ European races.

MotoGP’s race at Arragon (the Turuel Grand Prix) was up against the full force of the NRL Grand Final and as a result also turned in its smallest number of the year; 38,000 watching on Fox Sports. With the NRLGF capturing almost half of the total TV market on free-to-air on Sunday night, the race did not feature in the top-20 shows on multichannels, meaning less than 91,000 watched on 10Bold.

QUICK COMMENT: WHY SUPERCARS WILL LOVE SEVEN’S AFL GRAND FINAL RATINGS

THE FIRST AFL Grand Final played at night will likely be the most-watched thing on Australian TV this year, thanks to an enormous audience of almost four million people watching nationally on the Seven Network on Saturday night.

And that is very good news for Supercars.

Australia’s major motorsport category returns to the network next year and will love the fact that their numbers are massive.

As we touched on in our Bathurst debrief last week, one of Channel 10’s problems in getting eyeballs their Supercars content is that their share of the audience is comparatively tiny compared to Seven and Nine.

The smaller the audience overall, the less people to see the advertising and promotions asking them to tune in for a major event like the Bathurst 1000, which then translates into smaller numbers for that coverage.

That won’t be a problem on Seven.

Assuming the AFL schedule returns to some form of normality next year, the Grand Final should return to being played a week prior to the Bathurst 1000.

With Seven being the kings of cross-promoting their various products, expect a massive push showcasing their return to the Great Race during their Grand Final coverage next year.

It’s a massive boost for motorsport, who will once again have access to the largest TV audience of the year in a bid to draw eyeballs to Supercars’ biggest day.

It goes beyond that, too: With every Supercars and ARG / Shannons round due to be on the screens of Seven next year, tapping into the regularly large AFL audiences throughout the year will be a valuable addition.

For the record, the free-to-air Grand Final audience was an enormous 2.8 million people. The 1.5 Million people watching in a locked-down Melbourne alone was the same as the total audience watching the Bathurst 1000 a week prior.

The AFL big dance also drew more than 800,000 more eyeballs than the NRL match held on Sunday night which is a massive win for the former.

Footy remains the biggest drawcard on Aussie TV, on free-to-air or Subscription.

Fox Sports have been impressive at cross-promoting their various sporting products, including pushing their Supercars content within their Footy coverage time and time again.

That’s been lacking on free-to-air for the last six years, so Motorsport being able to piggyback off the ball sports once again should be a big boost for the sport.

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 the ratings agency to media outlets and do not include any additional reporting including time shifted content, regional ratings or broader reach, unless released by the sport. They also do not include streaming numbers on Kayo or SuperView, etc).