A BIG audience of 451,000 people watched the wild Darwin Supercars opener on Saturday, as Channel Seven’s return to motorsport continues to draw big numbers.

336,000 people watched the dramatic Race 12 of the championship on the screens of Seven, 185,000 in the capital cities and a further 151,000 in the regional areas.

That number was complimented by a further 115,000 watching on Fox Sports 506, the combined numbers making it the third-most watched race of the year to date, behind only the pair of Bathurst openers.

On combined numbers the race coverage was among the top-10 most watched programs on Australian TV on Saturday.

Seven’s free-to-air coverage was 21% higher than the equivalent Darwin broadcast on Channel 10 last year, while the race itself was 18% up on the total audience of 382,000 that watched the first Darwin race on 10 and Fox in 2020.

A Seven release confirmed the Saturday broadcast, which commenced at 11:30AM, reached more than 1.2 million people nationally, with more than 728,000 minutes of coverage streamed by the 7Plus app.

It continues Seven’s strong start to their return to Motorsport coverage following big numbers for their coverage of the Mount Panorama 500 earlier this year.

TRT is the only place with comprehensive coverage of Australian Motorsport’s TV coverage – stay tuned for a full wrap of the weekend and the season to date on Monday.

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).