I bet you were gob smacked this morning discovering the sky was blue. 

Well, perhaps in your part of the world that is the case.

Sat TV #EPL SBS #ManchesterDerby #MUNMCI #UTDvCITY 267k

Hurp de durp. Nobody can find SBS
Hurp de durp. Nobody watches soccer in September

Good numbers indeed.

Only cos it was on SBS 1 right? ;) 

What can be concluded from these great ratings?
It shows what happens when SBS seriously market a big game like they have for three weeks and show it on their main HD channel.
It shows that there are a lot of football fans who dont watch HAL games on SBS .
It shows eurosnobs are alive and well.
Maybe it shows having a good football commenatator makes a difference.
Maybe it shows HD makes difference.
Maybe it shows noone has Optus.What were the Optus figures?
It shows football can attract viewers before Oct.
It shows games on SBS attract more viewers than on Foxtel for epl.
I don't know what you are crowing about Bluebird.The ratings raise a lot of questions .Are you claiming the ratings prove ratings for football are independent of the channel they are shown on and the marketing prior to the game ?
The only way you would know if the channel has an effect on ratings is to have exactly the same game on SBS2 or one of the other fta channels,on the same day of the year given the exact same circumstances.For live sport thats virtually impossible.
Yet do you acknowledge that for decades shows shown on abc with mediocre ratings suddenly became hits when shown on commercial channels.Why?


Would you deny that the Manchester derby shown on channel 9 would have received greater ratings than SBS?

This is as silly as comparing our numbers with Afl etc. 

A lot of people have said we should start earlier and no one with half a brain cell would be deluded to compare our league with the MU vs MC derby.

Most rounds of the EPL will be beaten by the a-league consolidated friday night figures anyway (fox and sbs2). That doesn't mean our league is bigger than the EPL. 

It's laughable how some people can find a negative in anything when it comes to football. I'd no one watches it's bad, if audience figures are good (like last night) it's bad .... for the HAL. And if HAL figures are good (like the GF) then it's bad ... because they're not as good as AFL/NRL. It's a never ending distortion of reality to try and make football look bad, no matter what the figures are.

If people know a big event is on and are desperate to watch it of course they will find it. My mate lastnight whos a huge United fan was blowing up about how bad the optus stream was before i told him that it was on SBS so no some people arent aware its on sbs and hence why if it was played on ch 7 or 9 or 10 where most people watch tv during the week they would have been made very well aware the game was on.

The ratings for the game were great but if it had been on 9 or 7 or 10 on primary ch on hd it would have rated even higher. The quality of the match was awesome and neutral ch surfing would have watched.  But heaps of people dont ch surf sbs 1 and 2 because they are considered the "international ethnic stations".

Eh I thought it was good. 

The ratings were great.Hopefully they will keep being good come the HAL
But we still dont know what fta coverage there will be of the HAL.
If SBS and FFA were smart they would go for a sat night HAL game before the epl game.That would give viewers a terrific sat night of football and something very marketable .
Foxtel can go back to friday night exclusivity.
But ....can we rely on our football overlords to do some smart business?

Probably not but we can dream. It's all about the dollars. 

@ crimsoncruso

It's not the FFA/SBS that need to be smart, it's Foxtel - they decide which games go to SBS and when. A Saturday night game on SBS before the EPL would be a great move but not likely while Foxtel take their current approach

Interesting that more people in Brisbane and Sydney watched the sokkah than the AFL finals.

epl outdated wallabies on free to air too.

Wallabies have always gotten to the good slots based on who went to what school in the boardroom, never had anything to do with the numbers.

I remember a day before we had so many channels. The Wallabies cut over the first quarter of an Adelaide Crows game. We're talking games that rate hundreds of thousands of viewers.... in Adelaide alone. Yet here we had channel 7 playing the union, and this pissy picture in picture in the corner with the Crows game. And it wasn't an important game or anything, only the final round of the first premiership winning year of the defacto state team. The coin really dropped that the Ruggers don't GAF, if they can put their interests forward they will actually cut the network's wrists to do so.

Actually, for a sport broadcast on FTA in near prime time, the ratings aren't really that great at all. Solid maybe for football but below average for sport. 

Considering that the late NRL and AFL game last night both had higher ratings on FOXTEL only tells you how far behind the sport here really is.  
(Once again a female AFL game had better FTA  ratings and that only appeals to half the country).

Remember this game is probably as big as it gets and this is roughly the maximum amount of people who would be willing to watch some type of league football match in Australia.  

I dont think there would be much chance the EPL or A-league would get close to that on a consistent basis no matter what FTA channel it was on.









 





 

Crimson, yes. I do deny that the Manchester derby shown on channel 9 would have received greater ratings than SBS

I really don't understand how or when this became a deep rooted belief. Pretty much every HD TV has a built in TV guide. Its not hard to operate or read. People aren't allergic to SBS. Those who avoid it because all they show is "soccer, bloody soccer" aren't the type to then tune into "soccer" on another station

What those ratings show to me is that ratings are about choice. People wanted to watch a big EPL game in the same way they don't want to watch the A League. If we were on 7, they would switch to 9. If we were on 9 they would switch to 7 (or even SBS ;) )

I sincerely doubt if that was an A League game being advertised for 3 weeks and shown on their HD channel that we would have gotten the same ratings. Because we haven't in the past

The EPL is more popular than the A League. If its biggest game is rating 270k, and our biggest games are rating 170k-200k, then why would anybody think our ratings are hindered?

@bohemia - indeed, Wallabies could get whatever ratings they like and it would still get a good slot. They'll always be taken care of.

@ bluebird

This "deep rooted belief" as you call it was supported by an industry expert last year so it's not as if it's an urban myth; the difference between the same show on SBS2 v SBS1 was said to be 100k in viewers, with a similar lift if you go from SBS1 to the main channel of the FTAs.

His explanation was two-fold, the viewing figures increase because lazy casual viewers stick to the main channels, dedicated football followers will of course navigate their way around 99+ channels to find their game. But casuals surf but tend to stick with the major channels. I've simplified what he said but that's the just of it. There was also an uplift from boxes that do the measuring being left on popular channels even when the tvs off, again because that's where Joe average fiends must of their viewing time.

I'll see if I can find the link to the article and post it. He also had dknething interesting on sgd groups with a majority of kids not watching tv any more and streaming everything and their most popular tv shows often being you tubers not conventusl shows.

Finally - 2.1 million people watch HAL and 1.7m the EPL, so more people watch the domestic competition than any overseas version. Again, the HAL dues not compare to NRL/AFL/BBL, but it doesn't need to

So why is it that after the WIN and Southern Cross Austereo switch on the 1 July that the exact same content is rating significantly higher on WIN than did previously on SCA? And why is it that the local news which is WIN produced is rating lower now that it has channel TEN content around it (and vice versa).

You have got to realise there are 25 million people in Australia and they don't all think and act in the same patterns and your way of viewing tv is probably in the minority even if it sounds logical.

I think Bluebird long lost his objectivity.He has his opinion and cites anything to support it and naturally ignores anything that doesn't.
Logic says the channel any program is on affects its popularity.Just as the locatin of a shop affects its popularity.
I know when my foxtel is switched on it starts at channel 9.Lucky channel 9.
If I am channel surfing for something to watch ,I start at the begining and if I find something I watch that.So naturally the channels furthest from the start get a raw deal.
If I am focused on a specific program I go straight to it.But if I dont know times programs are on,I might miss that program
I still find it funny on the program guide FOXTEL never show SBS having HAL on at the correct time on fri night.Invariably they will show news still on 1hr into the game.Quite deliberate im sure.

Bluebird,
Comparisons of an epl game late on SBS are still hard to make against finals games for nrl and afl ,that started in prime time on channels 7 and 9.To say it's the highest SBS might get ,may be close to the mark,but how about noting that the other codes were finals games?How about noting that regular season games for some afl and nrl games on lesser channels(yes they do make a difference) are extremely low.
How does the marketing of nrl and afl games compare to football games?If football had similar marketing would they get better ratings?
How many derby games of HAL have been shown on SBS?
We are talking about codes getting multibillion dollar deals against what football currently gets.Do the ratings of Football look that bad under those considerations?
Blubird look at the numbers all you like ,but we all know we not comparing apples with apples.So drawing conclusions on the basis of a level playing field is impossible.Two codes have 10times the budget of the other.

I'm not sure about that.

This is the ratings for the Saturday afternoon game, traditionally, a low rating timeslot:

Sat TV #AFL arvo #AFLFinals #AFLSwansGIANTS Seven 724k (Syd 157k Mel 359k Ade 102k Per 105k) 7mate Bri 66k

Sydney provided the second largest chunk of ratings across the nation - not too shabby at all.

What's the average Friday night A-League rating on SBS?  about 45k?  (and that's a  nationwide figure too).

If that weren't enough, here's the Fox ratings for the same game:

Sat STV #AFL #FoxFooty #AFLFinals #AFLSwansGIANTS 437k

To put that into context, that 437k is about 10 times what the A-League normally gets over the summer, even for better rating timeslots.

So, for that Saturday arvo game, that's total ratings of:  1,227k

Enormous figures for Saturday afternoon.

So basically one AFL game, featuring two Sydney clubs, on a Sat arvo, has rated five times what a full round of A-League games usually rates on FTA and Fox combined.

This is getting sad. Pala & co warn people on the OS thread. Go to the AFL forum.

A regular poster made an observation which is incorrect (like way incorrect), and I corrected him.

If nothing else, Joffa and I pride ourselves on accurate numbers, objectivity and independence.

Ever since the new update, this forum has been a free for all for Mr. Eggs to have their say and refuse to post in the Eggball thread.

AFL forum please

My main interest is soccer.

I want to post about soccer.

Its beyond sad. He's been doing it for years. Most other trolls get tired of it after a while. 

I have received a good deal of support over the years.

. you dislike our code .. Jog on back to big footy forum and bask with all the others in there about your rent seeking code.