2.45m as State of Origin lands biggest audience of 2010
NSW v Qld NRL pulled the biggest television audience of the year and sets a new State of Origin record.
- Published by David Knox
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The first State of Origin match for the year pulled the biggest television audience of 2010 with 2.45m viewers.
It beat the Australian Open 2.35m (outside of survey) and 2.23m for the first episode of Underbelly.
The broadcast peaked at 2.8m viewers and averaged 3.6m viewers including regionals.
It also sets a new State of Origin record beating 2.32m for last year’s Qld v NSW match and becomes the highest SoO game since the start of OzTAM ratings.
1.17m of them were watching in Sydney and 824,000 in Brisbane. Melbourne’s 328,000 was none too shabby either. The figures were not boosted by 3D viewers with Ch 40 not added into the OzTAM panel.
The game helped the Nine network net a 38.2% share for the night.
TEN’s MasterChef was the preferred choice in other cities, with 661,000 in Melbourne, 255,000 in Perth and 180,000 in Adelaide. It ranked second with 1.68m nationally.
Seven’s Lost finale averaged 615,000 over its 2.5hr finale, proving the network took a big risk in giving fans a premium channel finale.
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- Tagged with Australian Open, Lost, Masterchef, State of Origin, Underbelly
10 Responses
The pinnacle of Rugby League…so pay the Rep players what they deserve and keep the best players in the game. (Obviously all the best players are QLDers!)
bugger the blues lost yet again lets hope they win game 2 otherwise it is all over red rover
masterchef did well up aginst SOO stiil got to watch last nights episode
The horrible wet, cold weather in Sydney would’ve pushed that figure up higher; I didn’t budge from the house should’ve gone to Friends BBQ but I stayed in guessing many other did too?
@ Andrew – According to a story on Today Tonight earlier this week, about 5,000 3D TVs have been sold so far in Australia. If SOO helped push the majority of these sales over the line, 3,500 might be a good guess for the number who watched in 3D on their own TV. Hardly a blip in the overall ratings.
Although that sort of figure would give Nine 3D a share of about 0.2%?
@ Andrew — Just look at the sales figures for 3D television since it was released a few weeks back and probably take 75% of that figure and multiply by three (three being the average number of people watching one 3D television).
I wouldn’t say that Seven took a big risk. The other networks often take their best shows off the air or show repeats on State of Origin nights and that is just what Seven did by not wasting The Pacific on a night when everybody would be watching Nine.
Both State of Origin game 1 and MC were up from last year’s totals (MC was up by nearly 200,000 viewers from the corresponding episode). At least Seven had Thank God You’re Here to play with last year. Nine’s share went up (38.2% from 35.4% last year) while other networks’ shares went down. The timeshifting figures, to be released next Thursday, will tell us how many people recorded other programs while watching Origin.
I was predicting 700,000 for Lost in my head, so I’m not surprised by the number. But its still like 3 times the number of people who normally watch it. I’m glad channel 7 took the risk!
Andrew: 7
seriously how many people do you reckon were watching 3D? (apart from those at the invitation of the Nine Network 🙂 ) Is there any estimate as to how many 3D compatible sets are even out there?