Grand Prix beats Grand Final
A FORMULA ONE race that started at 11pm has out-rated the A-League Grand Final on Fox Sports.
Max Verstappen’s cruise to victory over Lewis Hamilton in a somewhat tepid Styrian Grand Prix was viewed by an average audience of 98,000 people on Fox Sports 506.
That compares to the 82,000 who watched Melbourne City FC beat Sydney FC 3-1 in the A-League finale, a game that commenced live on Fox Sports 505 at (conveniently) 5:05pm AEST.
The game was also broadcast on Kayo Sports as part of their ‘Freebies’ package – making it free-to-view – though as always no Kayo numbers are published.
The match was not broadcast live on free-to-air, though was available on ABC Me and the iView app from 9:00pm on Sunday night.
The A-League final brought an end to Fox Sports’ 15-year tenure covering Australia’s top Soccer competition, with coverage to shift to a combined free-to-air and streaming package, valued at $200m, with Network 10 and Paramount+ from next season.
The Styrian GP audience made it the fourth most-watched race of the eight contested so far this year and, in a weekend with no NRL matches, made it the fourth most-watched show on Subscription TV on Sunday as well.
51,000 watched the MotoGP Dutch TT, while 37,000 watched Moto2 and 38,000 for the earlier Moto3 race – proving people tune in for good racing despite the Gardner-factor in the second-tier race.
The weekend TV numbers were dominated by Game II of the New South Wales v Queensland State of Origin, which attracted an audience of 1.8 million to Channel 9.
IMAGE: McLaren
SOURCES: 7PR, 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.
