THE REPCO Supercars Championship’s TV ratings continue to track higher than last year following a solid weekend at Symmons Plains Raceway in Tasmania.

The championship has drawn an average audience of 673,000 (metro + regional) across the eight races contested to date, a healthy increase on last year’s season average of just over 500,000.

The overall increase is down mainly to Channel 7’s impressive national reach from the Mount Panorama 500 in February, and Fox Sports’ impressive numbers from the recent Sandown hit-out.

Though down on the Melbourne event, Symmons Plains’ action drew solidly for Fox Sports 506 with 127,000 watching Chaz Mostert sweep to his first win for Walkinshaw Andretti United in Race 8 on Sunday afternoon.

It was the fourth most-watched show on Subscription TV on Sunday and in front of two AFL games.

116,000 watched the earlier Race 7, while 11 of the top-20 programs shown on Foxtel on Sunday were Supercars programming from Tassie, with segments like the podium, the grid and support races ranging between 66,000 and 95,000.

That stat in particular will please the bean counters at Foxtel HQ as it proves a large and consistently loyal audience tunes in for much of the day whenever the Supercars coverage is on-air; the goal of any TV network.

While the numbers are lower overall, in terms of hours consumed per person the Supercars coverage ranks highly when compared to the major-league sports of AFL and NRL.

On Saturday, 118,000 watched Shane van Gisbergen continue his winning streak in Race 6.

Supercars announced a two-day crowd of 17,572 for the Symmons Plains event, comprised of 7,997 on Saturday and 9,575 on Sunday. The event had a 10,000 per day cap due to COVID-19 restrictions in place.

Next up is The Bend Motorsport Park in three weeks’ time.

Formula One

101,000 watched the wild Emilia Romagna Grand Prix from Imola, as local audiences relish Formula One’s decision to move their European race start times back an hour this year – meaning an 11pm AEST start time.

That audience is up 21,000 on the Imola race held late last year, but also larger than the second round of the 2020 World Championship held in Austria, for a more like-for-like comparison.

That audience is solid and placed the late-night Grand Prix ahead of all of the Tasmanian programming save for the two Supercars races on Sunday afternoon.

74,000 watched Qualifying on Saturday night.

Up against such competition, MotoGP didn’t get a look in when it came to Sunday night’s TV ratings, not featuring in the Top 20 shows on Fox Sports or free-to-air multichannels.

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).