A TV ratings “spike” has been recorded after the 2020 AFL season’s first game went ahead in an empty stadium on Thursday night amid coronavirus fears.
Channel 7 recorded its highest ratings in five years for the season opener with a national average audience of 1.24 million – 4.4 per cent up on last year.
According to News Ltd:
The average viewer numbers in Melbourne was 542,000, up from 482,000 in 2019, an increase of 12.4 per cent.
With the game also shown on Fox Footy, the broadcaster had 339,000 footy fans tune in, bring the total across both networks to 1.363 million.
In 2019, a total of 1.231 million footy fans tuned in to the traditional season opener.
Massive numbers. Such a tough decision to go ahead but the brutal reality is every game that is played will save a certain amount of jobs in the industry https://t.co/9iIRU1fpk9
— Jon Ralph (@RalphyHeraldSun) March 19, 2020
