Well over a million people tuned in to watch the RWC final, creating an all-time-high share of audience for Three.
The final of the RWC has delivered an overwhelming ratings result to Three, the free-to-air broadcaster of the tournament, in partnership with rights holder Spark Sport. It attracted an audience of over 1.2m, according to Nielsen figures supplied by Three’s owners Warner Bros. Discovery, along with an astonishing 64.9% share of viewers for the night – an all-time record for Three.
The ratings figures are all the more significant as 25-54 is the audience which has been abandoning linear television for streaming and other digital platforms. This has not just been a problem for broadcasters, like rugby rights holder Sky TV, it’s been a problem for rugby itself, with an ageing audience less attractive to sponsors and less likely to attend games. Of those watching television in that demographic, more than three in every four was watching the Black Ferns’ win.
It shows the power of the Black Ferns achievement – not just in attracting a big audience, but the exact audience which had proven elusive to even the All Blacks in recent years. It wasn’t just 25-54 either – the share for 5+ was almost as large at 73.1, with both men and Māori and Pacific audiences larger again at 76.9 and 76.6 shares respectively. But the popularity should largely be understood as demographically agnostic, as over 73% of women watched the game – a stunning result for a code which has traditionally had an audience dominated by men.
Those figures do not include viewers on ThreeNow or Spark Sport, meaning they represent a significant undercount of the true scale of viewership for the game. Spark Sport has been approached for its own audiences and we will update this story when they arrive.
By way of comparison, in most weeks the highest rating show on television for 25-54 year olds is either TVNZ1 News at 6pm or Country Calendar (the same two shows which top ratings for 5+). The most recent week for which figures are available had the news as the most popular show for the week, drawing 142,500 viewers aged 25-54. 107,000 watched the Black Ferns victory over Wales in the RWC quarter final.
The equivalent figure for last night’s match was 478,000 – more than triple the audience for the news, or a typical prime time All Blacks game this year. That the game ended in a spellbinding victory suggests that this brand new audience could well be sustained, or at least a large proportion of it could, if properly curated by NZ Rugby. It instantly changes the dynamic around the Black Ferns when it comes to TV rights, to sponsorship and to scheduling.
The team are world champions again and can no longer be ignored – last night’s victory, following on from last year’s Olympic gold, have given them a prominence and cultural weight which are unlike anything else in our current sports landscape. The enormous and demographic-spanning audience it drew shows that the sporting landscape in this country will never be the same again.