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2.09m as Dragons blitz NRL Grand Final

2.09m viewers watched the NRL Grand Final last night as the Dragons dominated the Roosters.

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2.09m viewers watched the NRL Grand Final last night as the Dragons dominated the Roosters 32-8.

The win ended a 31-year premiership drought for the Dragons. It was also join venture club St George Illawarra’s first title, having lost the 1999 grand final to Melbourne.

The twilight game helped drive Nine to a winning Sunday night, although Seven ranked a respectable second.

With some cities enjoying a Monday public holiday and events such as the NRL and Commonwealth Games, figures should be viewed with some context.

That said, Learn India With Hamish & Andy (1.23m) won its slot over 60 Minutes (1.22m) and The X Factor (1.11m average across its two hours).

Sunday Night was 1.04m, Offspring (935,000) and Stephen Fry Live at the Sydney Opera House did well with 872,000.

TEN’s Commonwealth Games lead in Good News Week: Delhi 2010 was 509,000 and a special Games Project 301,000 in select cities. The Opening Ceremony averaged just 414,000 for its midnight start (AEDT) -the ratings cut-off for Sunday is 2am. Tonight will be a much better indicator of audience interest.

The Big Bang Theory on GO! was the top digital channel show with 308,000 and the channel pulled the biggest share on 4.1%. But 7mate took second place in only its second week with 3.2% while GEM had to settle for fifth with 0.9%. Update: Nine advises figures for GEM were affected by simulcast figures allocated to Nine. There were also issues switching back to GEM programming in Melbourne and Perth.

Last year’s NRL final was 2.52m.

Week 41

34 Responses

  1. both ne3tworks are going to throw big money at the next rights for both codes. the afl should get close to a billion and the nrl might get the same

  4. Don’t forget Geoff, there are two more rounds of NRL and those figures include the State of Origin games as I understand it also, so on average the viewership is higher with AFL.

    Good to see both codes doing well regardless.

  8. why do we have to have this ongoing “my game is bigger/more popular than your game” discussion? Who cares?!? It’s not like the ‘loser’ of the two is going to go away or that the ‘winner’ gets a medal. Just deal with the fact that we have 2 major football codes and get over it already.

  9. Those crowing about the AFL’s win in the Grand Final ratings should take note of the cumulative ratings for the year.

    Before this weekend’s NRL GF and AFL GF Replay the tally stood at NRL: 120mil AFL: 112mil.

    Even after the massive AFL GF rating, the NRL had the greater cumulative total.

    smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/nrl-races-ahead-in-tv-viewers-stakes-20100930-15z9t.html

  10. My bad – originally reports were that the AFL GF rated 3.6Mil last saturday, I see that was amended to 2.6Mil

    However, the weekend before we have 3.7Mil watching.. no matter how you look at it, the AFL still Thumped the NRL.

  11. The NRL GF is down mainly because of the Melbourne ratings. Sydney, Brisbane and Perth were all up a combined 120,000 while Melbourne was down about 400,000 from the last year’s game involving the Storm. The same thing happens with the Swans in the AFL. The Sydney AFL GF ratings are down over 500,000 viewers from 05/06 when the Swans were in the AFL GF. The NRL GF regional ratings will be about 1.1-1.3m. The AFL GF had 786,000 viewers in the regional markets for the first GF.

    At this stage it seems that this year the AFL GF clearly outrated the NRL GF on a nationwide basis. But then the NRL had higher nationwide ratings in weeks 1-3 of their respective finals series.

    5CityMetro+4Regional Markets(NNSW,SNSW,VIC and QLD)
    Week 2
    Rugby League Final Series Sf1-1,584,000
    Rugby League Final Series Sf2-1,368,000
    Afl: Sf2: Geelong V Fremantle-1,253,000
    Afl Finals 2010: 1st Sf Wb V Syd-935,000*
    Week 3
    Rugby League Final Series Pf2-1,712,000
    Afl: Pf1: C’wood Vs Geelong-1,603,000
    Rugby League Final Series Pf1-1,457,000
    Afl: Pf2 St Kilda V Wb-973,000*

    *These 2 AFL games only have the Metro ratings as they did not rate high enough in the regional markets to make the weekly top 40.

  12. It’s not that AFL or NRL is better than the other, it’s more of a psyche thing. On grand final day in Sydney the place doesn’t stop we can still find lot’s of other things to do rather than watch footy and we don’t beat ourselves up over it, we are just not that parochial. In theAFL states it’s a lot more tribal and that’s ok.

    I watched and I am a happy little vegimite, Go Dragons !!!

  13. I don’t know if it was only in Perth. But 9 and GEM ran the exact same programming all day yesterday (Sunday). It was really annoying. Not sure what was up with that.

  14. The difference between AFL and NRL however, is the NRL doesn’t ask people to pay twice for a game that should only last one day. We’ll take our 2.92m in ratings and prepare for next season, while you can take the 1 mil more to figure out how the hell to stop the situation happening again in the future.

  19. As we see again, like every other year, the AFL is clearly the most watched sporting competition in Australia. The figures for the Sunday night NRL Grand Final in prime time in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth are embarrassing. Add to that about double the amount of viewers in Sydney for the Saturday afternoon AFL Grand Final.

  21. An all-Sydney Grand Final is the reason why the ratings are somewhat lower than last year. Also, this figure will be boosted when you add regional figures to the total, as St George is from the Wollongong area, which is not covered in the Sydney viewing figures.
    Also @DansDans, how is this more than 1 million less than the 2.68 million from Saturdays replay?

  22. Whats that I hear about the NRL having higher ratings all round? The game that matters was more than 1 million viewers less than both AFL Grand Finals…

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