Audience goals: SBS’ awesome free ratings kick thanks to #Floptus

TONIGHT’S Australia versus Denmark World Cup clash will again see SBS kicking goals with its ratings figures as Optus’ pain continues.

AS Optus tries to salvage its reputation amid its World Cup coverage disaster, SBS is raking in the ratings, and will hit new highs when the Socceroos take on Denmark tonight.

The multicultural broadcaster, which sold rights to stream matches to Optus for $8 million, then got them back with an awesome free kick when Optus’ streaming coverage choked, has had a week of rare double-figure audience shares since the start of the week.

The big Socceroos matches — which SBS always had rights to broadcast as part of the deal — are the icing on the cake.

Last Saturday as Australia took on France in an 8pm timeslot, SBS won the ratings night with metropolitan ratings of and average 1.6 million viewers in five cities.

Include regional viewers and that figure becomes 2.1 million and made the clash the ninth most-watched free-to-air program nationally this year.

It was the number one show of Saturday night, and enough to help SBS to a 27.9 per cent share of the free-to-air TV audience.

It can expect the same big numbers — and perhaps more — to tune in tonight, when the Socceroos meet Denmark with a 10pm kick-off.

Traditionally, SBS pulls finishes last of the five free-to-air networks with single-figure audience shares of about six per cent.

But Optus’ capitulation on Monday to hand all group stage World Cup matches back to the SBS as its live-streaming melted down have changed that.

SBS has had double-figure audience shares since Monday when the broadcast restrictions came off and allowed soccer fans to catch all the matches well into the wee hours.

SBS has seen double-digit free-to-air audience shares of 12 per cent on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

It hasn’t been enough to see SBS overtake ABC to climb off the bottom of the audience share ladder, but the gap is now a matter of percentage points, rather than being about half of its nearest rival.

And nightly, SBS has been able to add at least 200,000 viewers to its World Cup viewing tally via the extra matches.

On Tuesday night the Colombia vs. Japan match at 10pm pulled in 475,000 metro viewers. But viewers who stayed up also saw Poland v Senegal (118,000), Tunisia and England live (96,000) and another 72,000 for a repeat of the England match,

On Wednesday night the 10pm Portugal v Morocco match saw 549,000 fans tune in. Another 148,00 stayed around for Uruguay versus Saudi Arabia at 1am, and Russia’s clash with Egypt attracted 68,000 eyes in five cities.

Meanwhile, Optus continues to try to appease users — or would-be users of its embattled World Cup streaming service, offering refunds to those already signed up, and leaving its app and sport streaming services free and open to everyone in Australia for the remainder of the World Cup and through to August 31.

A decision has not yet been made as to whether Optus will retain its exclusive rights to broadcast two of the four quarter-final matches