Last night’s State of Origin match dominated free-to-air TV ratings as the showdown helped bring Nine to victory as well as New South Wales.

The match pulled in a whopping 2.563 million viewers across the metro markets in the 7.30pm time slot. Unsurprisingly, Brisbane and Sydney saw the highest viewer numbers.

Sydney had the most amount of eyeballs trained to the TV (1.199 million) with Queensland trailing on 857,000 viewers, according to OzTam preliminary ratings.

Nine saw the largest total combined share for the night with a total share of 45.8%. The main channel had a share of 38.2%.

The next closest network was Seven with a share of 20.3%.

Seven’s most watched non-news channel was Home and Away which drew 850,000 viewers.

The team challenge on MasterChef kept the cooking show in the top ten with 859,000 viewers, coming in ninth place just in front of Home and Away.

Ten drama Offspring wasn’t far behind in 12^th place with 823,000 viewers.

Ten missed out for second place overall by 2.8% behind Seven’s 20.3% share. Ten had a total combined share of 17.5%, according to OzTam.