Fox Sports has completed a massive weekend of sport playing out over 10 Fox channels on Foxtel and 372 live-streamed events on Kayo, including 37 concurrent live streams on Saturday, providing sports fans with over 1,700 live hours of entertainment.
Weekend highlights included:
NRL Round 6 saw average audiences of 369,000 on Foxtel and Kayo, up 11% year on year. Saturday afternoon’s Rabbitohs v Wests Tigers clash was the Round 6 standout on Fox, attracting an average audience of 465,000 and ranking as the 11th highest NRL game of all time on subscription television.
Round 6 of the NRL featured average audiences of 372,000 (TV + streaming), up 12% year on year making 2021 the number one rating NRL season ever for the Foxtel Group.
The 2021 AFL Season is also seeing fans choose Fox Footy in record numbers. Average audiences for the first five rounds reached 253,000 on Foxtel and Kayo, up 18% on 2019 and ranking the 2021 Season alongside 2020 as the highest rating AFL season ever for the Foxtel Group.
AFL Round 5 saw average audiences of 213,000 on Foxtel and Kayo. With matches back to three-hour durations and quarters returning to 20 minutes from the shortened form of the game in 2020, 2019 provides the best average audience comparisons for 2021.
Nevertheless, average audiences fell for Round 5, with the equivalent 2019 round played over Easter, which featured nine standalone games. Friday night’s game between West Coast and Collingwood was the number one game of the round with an average audience of 339,000.
The AFLW 2021 Season concluded with Brisbane’s 18-point victory over Adelaide with an average audience of 128,000, up 64% on the 2019 Grand Final, ranking it as the third-highest rating AFLW game ever on subscription television. The 2021 AFLW Season attracted average audiences of 35,000 across 68 games on Foxtel and Kayo, up 19% on 2019 and up 3% on the shortened 46-game 2020 Season.
Steve Crawley
Fox Sports executive director Steve Crawley said: “Fox Sports is going from strength to strength as the go-to destination for fans wanting the best Australian and international sports.
“To play out 1,700 hours of live sport on one weekend is quite an achievement. We had it all from the IPL and Queensland’s dominant performance in the Sheffield Shield Final in cricket to the best motorsports with the Supercars Tasmania SuperSprint, Portuguese MotoGP and Formula One in Imola, together with Mick Fanning’s comeback at the World Surf League’s Narrabeen Classic, the A-League, and Australia’s most winter popular sports codes in AFL, including the AFLW Grand Final, and NRL.
“Our shows are also knocking it out of the park. Fox League’s Sunday Night with Matty Johns delivered an overnight cumulative audience of 142,000 on Foxtel, while on Fox Footy, Sunday night’s episode of Bounce hosted by Jason Dunstall saw overnight cumulative audience of 152,000.
“Our selection of sports is unrivalled, we are working hard to deliver an outstanding product that people love, and we have a commentary and production team and the personalities that are the best in the business. It’s seeing Fox Sports audiences continue to grow across the Foxtel Group.”
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