1.2m watch Bathurst 1000 in strong ratings year
THE early TV numbers for the Repco Bathurst 1000 point to a strong year for Australia’s most-watched motor race.
A national audience of 1.223 million people watched Sunday’s race on the Seven Network, claimed by Erebus Motorsport duo Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood for the first time.
That includes 102,000 watching on 7plus Sport and a total Broadcast Reach (the total number of people who watched at least some of the broadcast) of 3.396 million people.
It made the Great Race the #1 program on free to air TV on Sunday.
The numbers do not include audiences watching on Fox Sports 506 or Kayo Sports, with Foxtel opting to not have their ratings data published via the same avenue as the free to air networks.
The numbers are an uptick of more than 200,000 on Seven’s 2023 national audience of 1.08 million and come at the same time Supercars begins work on a critical new broadcast deal that will commence at the start of the 2026 season.
The Great Race remains one of Australia’s most-viewed sporting events with broadcasters in particular loving the fact that retained audience is for the entire six-plus (in most years) hours of the race, rather than the three or so for the AFL or NRL Grand Finals.
Earlier in the weekend, 674,000 watched the Top 10 Shootout while 250,000 watched Friday’s qualifying session on Seven. Again, both numbers do not include Fox or Kayo details.
What will the total audience be?
BASED on previous years we can estimate the Foxtel / Kayo audience will be around 500,000 people.
This would take the total audience to over 1.7 million people and a total reach of well over 4 million.
Last year’s total audience was 1.54 million, 2022 1.84m and 2021’s race 1.76m.
Data collected by TRT has the average race audience since 2017 at 1.765m people, meaning this year’s race will be bang on that number.
How does it compare to other stuff?
THE AFL Grand Final became Australia’s #1 rated show this year with 4.024m people watching Brisbane beat the Swans on Channel 7, with a reach of 6.087m.
The NRL Grand Final on Nine saw 3.422m people watching their showdown, with a total reach of 5.349m.
The 2024 Australian Grand Prix drew 751,000 on Channel 10 and another 300,000 on Fox Sports.
Last year’s Melbourne Cup drew 1.34m people nationally.
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.
