MORE than half a million people tuned in to watch Race 14 of the Repco Supercars Championship on Channel 7 and Fox Sports on Sunday afternoon.

An average national audience of 517,000 watched the race, won by Shane van Gisbergen, up from 422,000 for the same race last year on Fox and Channel 10 – representing a 23 per cent increase year on year.

216,000 watched on Seven in the metro areas with a further 172,000 watching regionally for a free to air total of 388,000, while 129,000 watched on Fox Sports 506.

It’s the largest number for a Supercars race not held at Mount Panorama, Bathurst or the Adelaide 500 since the 2019 Newcastle 500 decider.

Sunday’s Seven broadcast averaged 293,000 national viewers across it’s full five hour run.

The power of Channel 7’s additional reach continues to bear fruit, with their free-to-air coverage up 27% compared to 10’s Darwin coverage from last year. The network reached 1.48 million people nationally with their Sunday broadcast.

The Darwin event’s cumulative audience for the three races was up almost 25% on the first 2020 event in the Territory, which will undoubtedly make the local Government’s tourism department extremely happy.

7plus streamed 878,000 minutes for Supercars yesterday and 394,000 during Races 13 and 14.

Meanwhile, 12 of the Top 20 programs on Subscription TV on Sunday were motorsport-related, 11 of them from Darwin with 101,000 watching Race 13 and 129,000 Race 14.

The Race 14 figure is the highest for a Fox Sports race since Sandown’s second round earlier this year, eclipsing all the races at Symmons Plains and The Bend Motorsport Park despite the competing free-to-air coverage that those rounds lacked.

Notably, 61,000 watched the two most-watched support races (likely including Oli Bayliss’ stunning debut Superbike win) while 76,000 watched Supercars Trackside.

As always no Kayo Sports numbers have been made available at we hit publish on this story.

With five events complete, the Supercars Championship is all but at the half-way point of the 2020 season.

Fox Sports’ numbers are consistent year-on-year, averaging 131,000 per race; identical to their numbers for the entire 2020 season.

Two rounds in, Seven’s free-to-air coverage is averaging 407,000 (metro + regional). After showing the same number of races / events last year, Channel 10 averaged 333,000 people; making it a nearly 30% increase year on year.

The NTI Townsville event in three weeks will also be broadcast on both the screens of Seven and Fox Sports.

SOURCES: 7PR, TV Tonight, Mediaweek, TV Black Box.

(NOTE: Numbers are overnight metro (5 capital city), Regional and Foxtel ratings supplied by ratings agency OzTam to media outlets. They do not include any additional reporting, including time shifted content or broader reach, unless released and / or freely available. They also do not include streaming numbers on Kayo or SuperView, etc).