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The Front Bar’s secret weapon in ratings war with The Footy Show

THE ever-widening ratings gap between head-to-head AFL shows The Front Bar and The Footy Show could come down to this.

Cartoon: Mark Knight
Cartoon: Mark Knight

THE Front Bar’s secret weapon has been revealed — women.

The Channel 7 football program is proving a winner with the ladies — getting a much larger amount of female viewers than rival The Footy Show.

Ratings figures reveal that women make up around 45 per cent or more of The Front Bar audience in any given week.

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Sam Newman on The Footy Show.
Sam Newman on The Footy Show.
Rebecca Maddern won’t be returning.
Rebecca Maddern won’t be returning.

Last Thursday night 128,000 women in Melbourne watched Andy Maher, Mick Molloy and Sam Pang chatting AFL.

Compare that to the 58,000 women in Melbourne that watched Eddie McGuire and Sam Newman on last week’s edition of The Footy Show.

The gap was significant in other cities as well.

In Adelaide, The Front Bar had 21,000 female viewers to The Footy Show’s 11,000. In Perth it was 26,000 to 11,000.

The Front Bar’s audience across 2018 is 46.2 per cent female in Melbourne, 45 per cent in Adelaide and 48.8 per cent in Perth.

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Andrew Maher, Mick Molloy and Sam Pang are winning over female viewers.
Andrew Maher, Mick Molloy and Sam Pang are winning over female viewers.

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“Sports shows are traditionally seen as attracting large swathes of male viewers but The Front Bar proves that if you get the formula right you can easily win female fans as well,” media analyst Steve Allen said.

The ever-widening ratings gap between The Front Bar and The Footy Show means that Seven’s program is also top with men.

Last Thursday’s edition of The Front Bar had 153,000 male viewers in Melbourne compared to 79,000 for The Footy Show.

In Adelaide, The Front Bar scored 26,000 men to The Footy Show’s 14,000. In Perth it was 32,000 to 23,000.

Creating an entertaining sports show that attracts female fans is icing on the cake for The Front Bar and Seven.

“The large amount of female viewers was the driving force behind the monster figures that Top Gear and the AFL version of The Footy Show used to get in their heyday,” Allen said.

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Original URL: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/the-front-bars-secret-weapon-in-ratings-war-with-the-footy-show/news-story/de4148096d4258cabbdf1f96bebd3076