AFL TV ratings smash 2019 average with 5.8 million people tuning in for Round 2
Fans were clearly hungry for footy! The AFL’s much-hyped return has delivered bumper ratings for broadcasters, and it wasn’t just the first game back that recorded phenomenal numbers.
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The AFL’s much-hyped return from COVID-19-enforced shutdown has delivered bumper broadcast ratings despite several sub-standard games.
Fans hungry for their first taste of football in nearly 12 weeks warmly welcomed the AFL back, with almost 5.8 million tuning in across round two. That figure - based on OzTAM data - equates to a 1.8 million bump on last year’s average of 3.969 million per regular-season round.
Thursday and Friday night’s prime-time blockbusters propped up the result. Collingwood and Richmond’s dour 36-all draw attracted a national audience of 1.643m across free-to-air and subscription channels, while Geelong’s 61-point blowout of Hawthorn had 1.278m viewers.
Essendon’s six-point win over Sydney was the next highest-rated match with 876,000, with the one-sided Port Adelaide-Adelaide showdown also attracting 690,000 nationally.
Those matches were broadcast live into most or all five major metro markets on free-to-air television.
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The figures will make for nice reading for the AFL’s television partners Seven Network and Foxtel, after chief executive Gillon McLachlan rubber-stamped a revised broadcast deal late last week.
Seven and Foxtel incorporated canned crowd noise into their broadcasts across all nine games to a mixed response, with some fans bemused by the addition of cheering after Thursday night’s draw.
Retaining most of the 5.8m audience in round three will prove difficult, as shown by the NRL when figures for Thursday’s second-up Brisbane-Sydney Roosters clash crashed by 500,000.
Is this the man to fill Bruce McAvaney’s shoes?
Jon Anderson
In a remarkably short space of time, Matt Hill has established himself as one of the finest racecallers this country has heard.
But could we see Hill, 34, follow the lead of a former calling great in Bill Collins by spreading his wings as a broadcaster into other sports?
And in doing so land himself in the pole position to one day inherit the large shoes of Bruce McAvaney at Channel 7.
Word has it that Hill wants to call some AFL games when his busy race-calling schedule allows, and certainly there are increased opportunities during the COVID-19 AFL fixture.
He isn’t an AFL novice, having called matches when he worked with the ABC, and as one former colleague observed: “If you are as good a broadcaster as Matt, then you will adapt to most sports, and nothing is harder in broadcasting than race-calling”.
Collins was so multiskilled that he was a key player on variety shows such as The Penthouse Club and Sunnyside Up, while McAvaney’s stellar career began as a race caller.
While Hill’s name is now associated with racing, he has already called at five Olympic Games (summer and winter) plus Australian Open tennis.
As for Seven, the broadcaster last year went well down the path in negotiations with Gerard Whateley. But that deal fell over very late when Tim Worner announced his surprise resignation in August and Whateley remained in his role as co-host of Fox Footy’s AFL 360.
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