Even though Rugby League won the television broadcast battle in Brisbane and Sydney, the Lions fixture triumphed easily nationwide and in Australia’s other three major city centres.
The national metropolitan top ten TV sports programs for that week shows Channel Seven’s coverage of the Lions v Collingwood clash in fourth place with an average audience of 849,521 people. Channel Nine’s equivalent coverage of the Broncos v Cowboys Friday night game ranked back in seventh place with 664,612 average viewers.
The only sports programs ahead of the Lions v Magpies match on the top ten national list were Wednesday’s and Thursday’s 2008 Olympic Swimming Trials coverage and the combined Channel Nine ratings of Thursday’s AFL and NRL The Footy Show entertainment programs.
Final figures show the total average audience that watched the Lions’ thrilling two-point win over Collingwood stood at over one million – 1,114,866 to be exact – once regional and pay television audiences were added to the metropolitan Free-To-Air tally.
This represents a 30,949 increase in average viewers from the same Lions v Collingwood clash in 2007 which recorded an average audience of 1,083,917 in Round 17 last year.
The 2008 TV ratings show the Lions v Collingwood game ranked first in Melbourne metro with 459,979 average TV viewers, second in Adelaide with 148,604 average viewers (just behind the Adelaide v West Coast fixture) and third in Perth with 130,940 average viewers behind two nights’ coverage of the Olympic Swimming Trials.
