Ten’s Melbourne Cup television viewer numbers continue downward spiral
Network Ten’s live telecast of the Melbourne Cup attracted the lowest audience since records began.
The Melbourne Cup’s television ratings attracted the lowest audience since viewership records began two decades ago.
Figures from ratings service OzTAM showed Network Ten’s live telecast of the nation’s most famous horse race drew a national average audience of 1.35 million viewers, compared to 1.695 million viewers in 2021 – a fall of 20 per cent.
Jockey Mark Zahra rode Gold Trip to victory on Tuesday afternoon on a day that saw Melbourne experience four seasons in one day, with rain, wind and sunshine.
The TV audience numbers for the iconic Group 1 thoroughbred race continued on a downward trajectory since Ten took over the broadcasting rights in 2019, registering the lowest four years of audiences since records started in 2001.
The ratings for the Cup across the five major capital cities also took a dive, falling from 1.213 million in 2021 to 1.024 million viewers this year – a 16 per cent decline.
In the major capital cities figures fell in four of the five major capitals compared to last year, Melbourne was the only city to buck the trend and it had 528,000 viewers watch the race, slightly up on 520,000 in 2021.
In Sydney, viewers fell from 310,000 in 2021 to 212,000 this year, Brisbane had 205,000 viewers last year but this fell to 132,000, Adelaide fell from 89,000 to 79,000 viewers and Perth dropped from 89,000 viewers last year to 73,000 on Tuesday.
Ten’s figures showed on their live stream broadcast on 10 Play, 152,000 viewers tuned in, down from 175,000 viewers last year.
Ten took over from Channel 7 as the broadcasting partner in 2019 and has the broadcasting rights until 2023.
The network’s racing commentary team was led by host Eddie McGuire, Francesca Cumani, Glen Boss and Michelle Payne.
Other commentators included Michael Felgate, Caty Price, James Winks, David Gately and Brittany Taylor.
Seven also had rival racing coverage on Tuesday, airing Sydney’s The Big Dance from Royal Randwick, but it drew much smaller audiences than Ten and had a national audience of 207,000 viewers.
Across the five major cities it drew 130,000 viewers.
This year’s Melbourne Cup Carnival was the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began that Flemington racecourse did not have any crowd capacity limits enforced on the pinnacle racing day, and about 90,000 people turned out to the track in blustery winter-like conditions.
Crowds were banned from Flemington for the Melbourne Cup in 2020, while a limited capacity of racegoers were permitted to attend the event last year due to government-enforced restrictions.
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