Ninja Warrior viewer fury: ‘Thanks for the massive spoiler, Nine’

DID you pick up the blatant spoiler midway through last night’s Australian Ninja Warrior finale? A lot of viewers sure did, and they weren’t happy about it.

IN the end, nobody could make it to the end of the punishing Australian Ninja Warrior course — but for some eagle-eyed viewers, it wasn’t too hard to figure out who’d performed best during last night’s gruelling finale episode.

Only eight contestants made it to the second section of the course — and all eyes were on 27-year-old Fred Dorrington, competing with a weight of expectation on his shoulders after an impressive showing on the UK version of the franchise.

Dorrington put in a sterling effort but ran out of time, dropping into the pool two-thirds of the way through the course as the siren sounded.

As he dried himself off for a post-race interview with Freddie Flintoff, a graphic flashed in the corner of the screen: Dorrington would be appearing live the following morning on Today.

Did @Channel9 just give away who wins/ who does best in #NinjaWarriorAU? pic.twitter.com/4qmOaJ8dBF

— Shane McInnes (@shanemcinnes) July 25, 2017

@NinjaWarriorAU thanks for a massive spoiler half way through. The only contestant to be on @TheTodayShow tomorrow. Hmmm #NinjaWarriorAU pic.twitter.com/kR7awmokp4

— Neil Angus (@neilaja) July 25, 2017

Viewers who noticed the promo didn’t have to draw a particularly long bow to assume Dorrington would be the night’s overall winner. Yes, previous episodes had seen similar promos run for several of the top-placing contestants of the night — but last night, it was only Fred who scored a teaser promo promising a more in-depth interview on Nine the following morning. Surely if Nine were only going to put one of the grand finalists on Today the next morning, it wouldn’t be the bloke who came, say, fourth?

Sure enough, when the first season of Australian Ninja Warrior wrapped some 25 minutes later, every other competitor left had crashed out of the course earlier than Dorrington, who was crowned the winner — or at least, the contestant who’d gone furthest. Viewers who’d picked up on that earlier spoiler were none too pleased that a network promo had given the game away:

So pissed off they spoiled this!!!!!!!!!

— MsSarah (@SarahHruskar) July 25, 2017

Yep they did. Spotted this as well and was rather annoyed. Way to go @channel9

— Raiderxxii (@raiderxxii) July 25, 2017

That's a major mistake to make

— martyn lawrence (@martynlawrence2) July 25, 2017

HAHAHA rookie error

— Lauren Smith🌸 (@lolaaberry) July 25, 2017

#NinjaWarriorAU you bastards gave this away after the first RUN, u said see Fred on today in the morning, spoiler alert, what the ...

— AlternativeFactsMatt (@market00747) July 25, 2017

Reality TV fans are notoriously unforgiving when it comes to spoilers — but Nine isn’t the first network to come undone by publicising their own results ahead of time.

In 2015 an unfortunate promo stuff-up resulted in The Bachelor’s regional viewers knowing who made it to the end of the competition well before the penultimate episode ended.

And last year The Project seemingly gave away the final result of Survivor right before the finale had aired, a promo announcing they’d be speaking to ‘the winner of Survivor’ in their next episode — as they cut to vision of contestant and eventual winner Kristie.

Originally published as Ninja Warrior viewer fury: ‘Thanks for the massive spoiler, Nine’