http://www.footyindustry.com/?p=3848
NRL
The NRL rated 3.815m for the round (in Australia, with an estimated extra ~200,000 in NZ) with 1.251m metro, 785,000 regional and 1.779m Foxleague viewers. 3 of 8 games for the round were broadcast nationally on FTA.
The highest rating NRL game on free to air television this round was the Friday night match between Brisbane and South Sydney with 757,000 viewers, including 477,000 metro and 280,000 in the regions. Thursday night fell just short of 700,000 at 698k, and Sunday afternoon came in at 581,000.
On Foxtel,
Foxleague was rated number 1 STV channel by ASTRA, its first win in more than 2 months, and its third win since Foxleague debuted. The highest rating Foxleague game was Saturday nights Parramatta v North Queensland game with 255,000, with Penrith/Canberra behind in the narrowest of margins on 254k.
For the season, the NRL have topped 52.4 million (26 million on FTA). Metro (5 city) ratings are down 10% to an average of 390,000, mostly due to Sydney ratings being down -25% to an average of 195,000, up north Brisbane ratings are up 2% to 156,000. There is insufficient data for an accurate year to year comparison in each of the minor NRL capitals, but GEM ratings average 39,000 in 2017 across Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
Regional audiences are down -14% to 254,000 on average.
On Foxleague, the average audience is down -1.51% to an average of 233,000. Sydney audiences rate an average of 92,000, Melbourne 14,000, Brisbane 45,000, Adelaide 2,000 and Perth 6,000. Metro audiences average 158,000, with regionals averaging 74,000. As mentioned above, we are heavily indebted to Mediaweek for the above figures.
