It was a big weekend for sport on TV with the NRL and AFL grand finals along with Seven’s first televised cricket match as part of its new television rights deal.
Seven has reported its coverage of the Australia v New Zealand T20 International cricket has delivered the highest audience ever for women’s cricket with a peak metro and regional audience of 1.298 million viewers, averaging 888,000.
The audience for metro areas averaged 398,000 viewers and peaked at 609,000 as Australia chased down a big total from the Kiwis.
Across the match, Seven’s coverage reached 2.905 million viewers nationally, and over 2.074 million in metro areas.
Seven also reported its coverage of the 2018 AFL Grand Final West Coast v Collingwood has delivered a metro and regional peak audience of 4.297 million in-home viewers, averaging 3.378 million viewers, with an additional 11,000 watching for the first time ever on connected TVs. The numbers were down year-on-year, although the peak audience was higher.
The audience for metro areas averaged 2.601 million in-home viewers and peaked at 3.257 million, with a dominant share of 86.4%.
Across Grand Final day, Seven’s coverage reached almost 7 million viewers, and over 5 million in metro areas.
In Melbourne, an average audience of 1.247 million in-home viewers watched the Magpies fall agonisingly short, with the Melbourne audience peaking at 1.454 million.
In Perth, the average audience was 471,000 in-home viewers with the audience peaking at 568,000 as the Eagles won their fourth premiership.
Coverage of NRL Grand Final day dominated with the match, the pre-game entertainment and the post-match entertainment all attracting 1.5m+ crowds.
The victory by Eastern Suburbs saw them get away to an early lead. The match audience of 2,122,000 was the smallest in a decade and down on last year’s 2,301,000.
The win gave Nine a huge start to the week with a Sunday 6pm-12midnight audience share of 40.2%. The Sydney share was a massive 57.7% and in Brisbane 48.8%. The NRL also helped Nine to wins in Melbourne and Adelaide.
Mediaweek’s Twitter account detailed all the major sports audiences across the weekend. Follow Mediaweek on Twitter @mediaweekAUS.