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FOX Sports breaks AFL record

FOX Sports "Q-Clash” Gold Coast v Brisbane Lions on the weekend set a new AFL viewing record for the channel.

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FOX Sports “Q-Clash” Gold Coast v Brisbane Lions on the weekend set a new AFL viewing record for the channels.

The match pulled an average audience of 355,000 surpassing the previous record of 328,000, set by the Essendon v Richmond game back in 2007.

This was James Hird’s final game in Bombers colours and signalled the end of Kevin Sheedy’s long tenure as Coach at Windy Hill.

The bumper viewing numbers comes on the back of Foxtel signing a new rights deal with the AFL.

  • Tagged with AFL

22 Responses

  1. Warren, if “steadily asserting its popularity” meant “dropping viewers and attendances” for 1/2 a decade, you may have had a point. sub 70k ratings as standard for Swans games in Sydney tends to lean toward you being about as au fait with how well AFL is going in Sydney as an ant is au fait with how the stock market is going.

    As for embaressing (sic) ourselves… pot, kettle black.

  2. Gee, rugby league fans sure are defensive.

    I tell you what rugby league fans. Until you become a national game, please dont bother wasting the time of us dominant AFL fans. The country loves us, only two states out of 6 have any interest on your bottom feeder ‘game’. (and out of those two states, AFL is steadily asserting it’s popularity, then dominance).
    You are all embaressing yourselves.

    1.3 billion effortlessly. End of story.

  3. @Geoff: I guess some AFL supporters watch any old game then, myself however being a horribly selfish & fickle Sydneysider will only watch teams i actually like.

  4. @ deedeedragons, the AFL game was between two Queensland sides, why would Victorians the main viewers of AFL watch it, but your rationale the 355,000 viewers must be all Queenslanders– that would have to hurt the NRL if that was the case.

    @ FJ– I was stating a weekly comparision, this week the NRL couldn’t get over 200,000 people to watch the Number 2 Team play off against the Number 3 team in a game where the Storm’s Test players were playing, yes the Bronco’s may have played a second string side, but guys like Billy Slater, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk were out there.

    If you don’t think it’s a fair comparision, give me a better one? On a night where neither code had multiple games or FTA games on at the same time?

  5. @Geoof you have no idea. The ratings for the AFL increased at 9:20pm or so as bothh the Rugby Union and League had finished and the AFL hadn’t started the last quarter. There was also no 9:30pm like normal.
    If the AFL was as popular as you think then why did it only rate 351,000 when other codes have got over 400,000?
    AFL has ben on pay TV for well over 10 years and this is the first time it’s cracked a decent figure.
    The week before there were two NRL games that got a higher figure.
    The Broncos fielded a second string team too as they rested Test players. You should know these things before claiming otherwise.

  7. I love how all the big dopey NRL kids use any chance to tease and (try to) humiliate their old foes the AFL kids. It’s like primary school when someone gets nice shoes, or shows any sign of intelligence or even *gasp* thinking for themselves, the mugby bullies choose thuggery to deal with their jealousy, misunderstanding and above all – fear. Sorry NRL kids, it’s not our fault you can’t afford new shoes.

  9. At all the NRL lovers that love running their mouth on this site, let’s look at these figures.

    The Gold Coast Vs Brisbane Lions game featured two struggling teams from QLD (an NRL heart land) with prior to the game one win between both teams in 6 rounds rated 274,000 as the only AFL game for the night on Fox Sports 1.

    While over on Fox Sports 2 featured The Brisbane Broncos Vs Melbourne Storm, the No.2 Vs No.3 team in the competition featuring many players who played for Australia only the night before could only rate 184,000 in competition.

    Either NRL fans don’t enjoy good quality NRL or AFL is definately the better code in probably the fairest comparision between the two codes we are going to see in quite a while.

  10. @Luke W: the twilight match was moved from Sunday to Saturday because Sunday was Mother’s Day, and the AFL thought not many people would prefer to go to the AFL on Mother’s Day.

  12. It’s because there was no AFL game on Channel 10 at the same time. That rarely happens during primetime. Instead ot the AFL audience split between Fox and 7/10, it was all for Fox.
    That’s why the NRL rates so well on pay TV, none of it’s games on Fox are up against FTA.

  13. Even though this ended up being an exciting match, as other have said, this record was only broken because for some odd reason, the AFL chose to ditch the 2nd saturday night match and make it a twilight one instead, resulting in everyone flocking to the only match left to watch.

  18. This is because PayTV currently get the Worst four games, while FTA get the Best four games. This will change next year when Ch7 gets games 1,2,5 and 6, and Fox Sports gets games 3,4,7,8 and 9.

  19. Those ratings heavily justifies the AFL expansion into the Gold Coast, very unusual to have a game with no Victorian teams hit the number 1 spot. Premier Media and Foxtel would be very happy with that result. Gives some perspective on why pay TV was willing to spend $600 million on AFL in the next 5 years.

  20. I don’t know if you’re an AFL fan Bougues, but some of the best games are often between teams at the bottom of the ladder, and this one was one of the best so far this year.

  21. Who said nobody would watch games involving the new teams? It was a help. however, that there was no other game played on Saturday night.

  22. Shows to quality of AFL viewers when the highest rating AFL game ever on pay tv is between the two bottom of the table teams. (ducks for cover)

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