It was a massive night for the Nine Network, who holds exclusive rights to State of Origin, smashing the competition out of the park (if you can excuse B&T’s mixed metaphors).
Nine wasn’t the only winner last night, with the NSW Blues blowing their completion out of the water with a dominant 38-18 win over the QLD Maroons. This was in stark contrast to game one, in which the Blues found themselves at a loss when Joseph Sua’ali’i was sent off for a high tackle on Reece Walsh just seven minutes into the game. Much to the dismay of Blues fans everywhere, the boys struggled to get any kind of advantage for the remainder of the game and came out defeated 38 points to 10.
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But while the second match was anything but similar to the first, numbers-wise, the two were pretty on par, doing wonders for the Nine Network. The game raked in a huge total TV national reach of 5,192,000 and a total TV national average audience of 3,263,000 – a whopping 2 million + viewers higher than the regular number one program for the night.
As the dust settles on Origin for a little while, Nine is presumably breathing a sigh of relief over last night’s score as the Blues and Maroons head into a nail-biting deciding match on Wednesday, July 17th.
For those few Aussies not sporting Blue or Maroon yesterday, it was all about Julian Assange and Seven News Special following the Wikileaks founder’s journey back home to Australia. Landing in Canberra just after 7:30 pm, Seven News was on the ground as Assange reunited with his wife Stella who he married while behind bars. The special raked in a total TV national reach of 1,767,000.
