Naomi OsakaGETTY IMAGES
After the "great sporting rights shuffle" of '18 -- in which Nine "nabbed the tennis, Seven and Foxtel got the cricket and Ten missed out" -- each broadcaster is "slicing and dicing the viewership numbers to their advantage," according to Michael Lallo of THE AGE. Lost in the "crossfire" is the fact that, year-on-year, the figures "have barely changed." On Sunday, Nine declared its inaugural Australian Open broadcasts averaged "slightly bigger audiences" than Seven's in '18. But that was before the men's final, in which Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal. The match averaged 1.59 million viewers in the five biggest Australian cities -- a drop of more than 1 million since '17 and "down slightly on last year." This left Nine with an average viewership of 454,427 across all matches on all channels, just a "little lower" than Seven's '18 average of 456,067. But these numbers "mask the true appeal of the tennis." Almost 11 million Aussies "caught at least a few minutes of the Open on Nine," roughly the same as last year. And more viewers are "choosing to stream" the Open on phones: 110 million minutes this year, compared to 94 million in '18. Fusion Strategy Managing Dir Steve Allen said, "Every network sends us these Excel spreadsheets, and they all claim theirs is the correct interpretation of the ratings." He added, "Very broadly, the tennis ratings are flat" (THE AGE, 1/29).
ALL EYES ON OSAKA: THE MAINICHI reported about a third of all TV viewers in central Japan's Kanto region "were glued to the screen" on Jan. 26 as Naomi Osaka defeated Petra Kvitova in the Australian Open's women's singles final, according to ratings data. The second half of the match broadcast on public TV station NHK General earned a 32.3% share of the Kanto audience from 7:30 to 8:45pm local time, according to ratings and marketing firm Video Research Ltd. The numbers were "similar in much of the country," at 32.2% in western Japan's Kansai region; 29.8% in the Nagoya area in central Japan; 34.6% in the northern part of the island of Kyushu in southern Japan; and 26.5% in the area around Sapporo (THE MAINICHI, 1/29).
