Super Rugby TV ratings slump 57 per cent in two months

Super Rugby’s television audience has dropped dramatically, with ratings for the weekly live game on Nine slumping by 57 per cent.

Rugby Australia CEO Andy Marinos says he is thrilled with the TV ratings

Super Rugby’s television audience has dropped dramatically over the course of the regular 2021 season, with ratings for the weekly live game on Nine slumping by 57 per cent in just two months.

As part of its three-year, $100 million broadcast rights deal with Rugby Australia — signed last November — Nine aired one Super Rugby match each week during the season, with the remaining games shown on its subscription streaming service Stan.

While Stan hasn’t released any audience numbers for its Super Rugby coverage, the ratings for the weekly free-to-air match screened on 9Gem fell away badly throughout the 10-week regular season, particularly in the key capital city markets.

The opening match of the season between the Queensland Reds and the NSW Waratahs, on February 19, drew a healthy audience of 121,000 across the five-city metro market, but by Round 10, the weekly fixture on 9Gem was pulling just 52,000 — a drop of 57 per cent, according to ratings service OzTAM.

At the conclusion of the regular season this week, Rugby Australia issued a press release, claiming that domestic TV ratings were “up an average of 144 per cent across the season year-on-year”.

But the numbers simply don’t withstand scrutiny.

A spokesman for RA said the claim of a 144 per cent increase in TV viewership was based on comparing the season average of the single, weekly game shown in prime time on 9Gem (which always feature Australia-based teams), with the overall average of the eight games shown on Foxtel per week in 2020 (some of which did not feature any Australian teams, with many screened live in the middle of the night).

A more complete data analysis reveals that the five-city metro market’s proportion of the total rugby audience has fallen from 45 per cent in 2020, when the matches were shown on Fox Sports, to 35 per cent in 2021 to date.

Rugby Australia chief executive officer Andy Marinos said: “We’ve been thrilled with the television audience figures so far.”

In November last year, Nine secured the rights to Super Rugby and all Wallabies Tests until the end of 2023, winning a bidding war over a joint partnership between Foxtel and Ten.

Nine did not respond to questions from The Weekend Australian.