TV RATINGS: Supercars soars at Sandown
SUPERCARS have soared to their biggest Fox Sports ratings in more than 18 months as the series reverted to being shown live only on Subscription TV at the weekend.
The intense Sandown SuperSprint event saw Fox Sports draw their largest Supercars TV audiences since the Sandown 500 was last run, late in the 2019 season.
While the Mount Panorama 500 season opener was broadcast on both Channel 7 and Fox Sports, Sandown reverted to the regular model of Fox showing all the sessions live, while Seven relied on replays on their 7plus streaming service, and later via their terrestrial channels.
Sunday’s wet Race 5 saw 172,000 watching on Fox Sports 506; the largest audience the broadcaster has attracted for an exclusive Supercars race – i.e. one not shown live on free-to-air at the same time – since the 2019 Penrite Sandown 500, which drew an audience of 184,000.
Race 5 was the third most-watched product on Subscription TV on Sunday, beaten only by the Sharks v Raiders (256,000) and Wests v Roosters (220,000) NRL games. The Supercars race topped all three AFL games shown on Fox Footy.
The support categories will enjoy the fact that their top-rated session – 106,000 – out-drew the Port Adelaide v North Melbourne footy game (95,000).
Even the audience for the earlier Race 4 – 154,000 – was larger than any Fox Sports-only race broadcast last year.
Since 2018, only five Fox Sports exclusive races have drawn a larger audience than Sunday’s sodden spectacle.
139,000 watched Shane van Gisbergen’s remarkable charge through the field to victory on Saturday though you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that the chatter and replays on social media from that drive would have drawn people to Sunday’s broadcast.
As always, streaming audience figures via Kayo Sports are not currently available.
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.
