SUNDAY'S afternoon grand final has been declared a resounding success, with more Sydney viewers tuning in than last year and broadcaster Channel Nine trumpeting a national ratings win.
After a strong public campaign, backed by the Herald , to return the premiership decider to its traditional 3pm timeslot, the NRL and Nine compromised on a 5pm kick-off amid predictions that fewer people would watch the biggest match of the season.
But ratings figures released yesterday indicated that the television audience in Sydney was bigger than last year, with Manly's record 40-0 demolition of the Storm attracting an average of 942,000 viewers - up from the 935,000 who watched the same two teams in last year's grand final. The premiership decider was watched by a peak national audience of 2,465,000, with Nine's coverage averaging 2,074,000 viewers across the five mainland cities.
Despite being down by about 400,000 viewers on both last year's peak (2.86m) and average (2.48m) audiences, regional ratings figures released today are expected to show that the NRL grand final was watched by more people across Australia than the previous week's AFL decider.
In addition, more than 500,000 viewers tuned in to coverage of the match in New Zealand, with ratings figures suggesting that 9.9 per cent of the potential Kiwi television audience of 3.9m people watched the game live on pay TV at 7.15 pm and 8.3 per cent saw a replay three hours later on free-to-air broadcaster Prime. Not surprisingly, the biggest drop-off in viewers was in Melbourne - but the match still managed to draw an average audience of 492,000 in the Victorian capital after peaking at 587,000 at 6.30pm.
While down significantly on the 743,000 viewers who watched the Storm thrash Manly 34-8 in last season's premiership decider, the broadcast attracted 48.9 per cent of the Melbourne audience compared with a 36.3 per cent share when last year's grand final was shown in prime time.
In both Sydney and Brisbane, where the game drew an average 503,000 viewers and peaked at 595,000, the audience share was a massive 75.5 per cent.
Australian captain Darren Lockyer was among those who said he preferred the daylight kick-off compared to the night-time grand finals that had been staged since 2001.
"Eventually, I'd like to see the grand final go back to its traditional time - or maybe another hour earlier," said Lockyer, who watched the game from Brisbane, where it kicked off at 4.15 pm since Queensland is not on daylight saving time.
A number of commentators and former players noted that the daytime conditions had contributed to the high quality of the match.
"When they first announced it, I thought, 'I don't know, it's neither here nor there,' but yesterday confirmed it was terrific," Matthew Johns said.
"I thought the intensity of the game, the first 25 minutes, we haven't seen that for a while in a grand final. The way they moved the ball around was impressive … I was saying to the boys after the game that the atmosphere was just about the best I'd seen it at Olympic stadium since the Olympics. You get a real sense of 80,000 people being there. You can see all the colour. It was terrific."
Former Manly and Australia prop Mark Carroll said: "It was the right temperature. With night-time grand finals, you tend to get a bit of dew on the grass the surface gets a little slippery."
ABC radio's chief commentator David Morrow added: "The football was great. There wasn't any dew on the ground, there wasn't a high mistake rate like there has been in previous seven grand finals … One more thing - I'd get rid of that stupid entertainment."
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