Play Nice The Reach is King thread

[The Educator]

As an example of just how much of a joke averages are when comparing 2 programs with varying lengths, lets look at the FTA numbers for Friday night. The AFL v NRL averages are actually pretty similar. 638k v 576k. But when you take into account reach as well, you can ascertain that:

AFL had total 1.933m viewers that watched 59.4 minutes on average (assuming a 180 minute run time)
NRL had 1.426m viewers that watched 48.5 minutes on average (assuming a 120 minute run time)

In terms of comparing audiences, it's a blowout. The AFL had half a million more watching, and for longer. Not even close. Yet the averages make you think it was. You can't pull the 1 minute card when the AFL had a significantly longer watch time.

Reach alone is a joke, but averages, when used on their lonesome, are just as much of a joke.

You beat me to it

This is the three games we have from each code this year on FTA



Essentially we have a bit of variation but with an undeniable conclusion

On average, thus far, the AFL matches have had 1,948M watching for an average of 56.9 minutes

The NRL has had an average of 1.481M watching for an average of 50.7 minutes

So for the same "average" audience in reality you have 33% more viewers watching 12% more game time.

Using viewer hours (if you take 3 hours for the AFL and 2 hours for NRL which is probably overs for both in relatively equal proportions) you axiomatically have 50% more viewer hours

Obviously, you agree that using straight averages in your words is a "joke" and in my words somewhere between absurd and ridiculous. In my view what makes reach the best measure of TV engagement of a single sporting match of different lengths is that it corrects for the advantage of a longer match that "total viewer hours" provides

The volume figures for single matches (e.g. total minutes viewed) will almost always be higher for AFL games than NRL games because that portion of fans that watch the game from end to end will lead to a skew for the AFL

Whether there is a flaw with the reach calculation there is no rational / coherent reason to think it would be different to either code. The one game thus far (the vegas NRL match) that could have been effected by the "spill over viewers" deficiency in the reach estimate actually ended up with the biggest outlier thus far on reach / average ratios.

So while it is just an estimate (we don't, as far as I can tell, have access to the match duration for which the averages are calculated), providing the time the average person "reached" watched of a game is a pretty sound way of highlighting just how utterly absurd conlcuding the NRL with a marginally higher average - but with a third less actual viewers - "won" the ratings or (actually far worse) had "more viewers"

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Also, I don't think reach is entirely meaningless as well. Maybe the selling of ad spaces on TV only care about the accumulation of viewer minutes on the ads themselves but I'm sure some program sponsors and the sports themselves would understand the diminishing value of a viewer as they approach 100% viewership of the match.

Like the assumption that a person who watched only 40% of a game is twice as valuable as 20% is silly. Maybe they're 1.8x as valuable but not literally as double.

I put myself in the shoes of Toyota, who are the AFL's main sponsor and put their logo all over the field of play and broadcast. There's significantly diminishing value to an engaged AFL fan that Toyota sponsor the AFL, and if I chose to watch three games instead of two I doubt Toyota is getting any value out of me for that extra game when I buy a new car. However, to reinforce their status as the company that sells the most cars in Australia and crowd out the market, the best way is for the AFL to reach as many of the 26 million Australians as possible.

Similar with the AFL in the Northern states. Reach matters as well. Say they want 20 hardcore fans in 20 years time. Which game will generate that - 3 hardcore and 3 casual fans, or 2 hardcore and 5 casual Fans? Clearly the latter because the first step in being a future engaged fan is to have at least a passing awareness of the AFL in the first place.

And I'm just talking about % of broadcast. The increased match length is an additional advantage, if for no other reason it simply creates a product that more ads can be run through, generating more product (of which the audience has to be willing to watch, which is proving to be the case).

 

[BobbyMorri]

can we like have a separate thread for these "discussion"?

2nd time this thread has gone off course because 1 person (mainly) can't stop complaining.

All I am going to say is, if this new system is so great, why did it take 10 hours before someone posted last night's ratings? Last year, it would have been posted within a couple of hours, especially for a GWS match

 

[weewilly]

"Essentially we have a bit of variation but with an undeniable conclusion

On average, thus far, the AFL matches have had 1,948M watching for an average of 56.9 minutes

The NRL has had an average of 1.481M watching for an average of 50.7 minutes"

Ch 7 and the AFL would be very happy with those figures and I expect that for round one the ASFL ratings will improve on 2023 again and easily beat the NRL gain!
No doubt the bogan BS liar V'Landys will spin it as a win for the NRL which the Sydney centric media will print as a fact!

 

[The Educator]

Where does Oztam define average ratings as the categorical, indisputable measure of popularity?

I would have thought Oztam would present the numbers, show how it calculated them and then let people draw their own conclusions.

You are correct

There is no argument that I have heard that average ratings should be used definitively to compare the popularity of programs of different lengths that cannot be categorised as one of three fallacies

1. Argument to populism
2. Argument to tradition
3. Argument to authority

It seems to me where average ratings are very useful is determining the likely audience an advertisement might have been exposed to without any other information on timing of the ad.

Given that the primary commercial purpose of conducting ratings is precisely to establish the advertising value of a program it makes sense that this value would me captured and presented. The fact that this value has historically been given primacy (until this year) provides precisely zero support for its use to compare popularity between TV viewership of codes of different lengths.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

At the end of the day the reason why the AFL media deal is worth more money than the NRL's - despite the disadvantage of running overlapping games, despite the disadvantage of playing fewer fames in TV friendly timeslots, and despite the disadvantage of broadcasting all local games outside Melbourne to FTA in the local markets - is simply because all parties at the negotiating table understand the tables and facts presented above. More people are watching an advertisement on a broadcast of AFL than they are the NRL, simply because the accumulation of viewer minutes is that much higher. You can divide the numbers this way and that to come up with different categories and averages, but broadcast average * broadcast length = viewer minutes = ~viewers watching an ad = ~ value of TV rights deal.

 

[The Educator]

Can you post the reach for those locations?

Short of actual data, I would just multiply at this stage by 3.2 (subject to change when the sample size gets bigger)

So for 71k average brisbane viewers the best guess of reach at this stage is 223K

 

[The Educator]

At the end of the day the reason why the AFL media deal is worth more money than the NRL's - despite the disadvantage of running overlapping games, despite the disadvantage of playing fewer fames in TV friendly timeslots, and despite the disadvantage of broadcasting all local games outside Melbourne to FTA in the local markets - is simply because all parties at the negotiating table understand the tables and facts presented above. More people are watching an advertisement on a broadcast of AFL than they are the NRL, simply because the accumulation of viewer minutes is that much higher. You can divide the numbers this way and that to come up with different categories and averages, but broadcast average * broadcast length = viewer minutes = ~viewers watching an ad = ~ value of TV rights deal.

I would suggest you previous post (i.e. the dimishing returns to advertising at the same person) would better support the argument that is the total viewers that is the best proxy for value rather than total viewer hours. This is obviously more directly the case with subscription tv

 

[The Educator]

Yeah but wookies data presents to me that the nrl beat the afl in the head to head 'total' viewers. There's no clarification on what he means by total, so that's what I and every other person will have to believe and go by. What's a half a million viewers matter these days anyway .

Obviously we are on the same page generally but, to be fair, the "Total TV" figure gets its name from aggregating traditional metro, regional, BVOD measures (as well as adding estimates for rest of Aus and removing double counting). So the "Total" refers to "totalling" these disparate sources rather than a value judgement on what should be the "total" if that makes sense

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I would suggest you previous post (i.e. the dimishing returns to advertising at the same person) would better support the argument that is the total viewers that is the best proxy for value rather than total viewer hours. This is obviously more directly the case with subscription tv

Yeah, I'm making both points simultaneously, because the media rights deal is obviously made up of many components - raw advertising slots, subscription TV, advertising on subscription TV, growth of the game and marketing and financial planning strategies of both the sports themselves and the media companies into the future and how they can use each other to that end.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

In addition to the point that reach still has value for the point I made above.

There's a few posts above dismissing the value of reach for the AFL simply because "for a longer length game there's more chance people will just randomly come across the match and people can just start and stop watching the game".

This may be true for things like five-hour epics of the Australian Open final where people need to go to sleep if they're working the next day on a Sunday Night for a match that goes past midnight but no particular evidence that this is the case for the AFL.

In other words, despite the longer game length for the AFL, a person who begins watching the AFL (including those who watch from match start) is just as likely to continue to watch the rest of the game, to similar proportions to the NRL.

For example on Friday night the average mins per viewer for each code was 59.4 vs 48.5. This represents 33% and 40.4% of the broadcast length respectively.

Now for the sake of argument let's divide the two viewers into two groups: those that watch from the start of the game and those that watch the final half hour. Let's say the proportion is the same for both codes.

20% watch the entire match. 80% watch only the last half hour.

In a in a 120 min broadcast, you get an average viewership of 40% of the match length from the above example. In a 180 min broadcast you get a 33% entire match length. In both cases you had had 0% drop off of those that watch the match from the beginning, despite the fact that those watching from the beginning had to wait a longer time until the match end. Those are AFL and NRL numbers.

In other words the claim that AFL greater reach as a result of longer match broadcast and some who do watch won't stick around and watch the length of the game, which is why reach to average ratio is higher, is not necessarily true even if intuitive by the numbers. My mathematical example proved above that that doesn't have to be the case, and you can have these different ratios with an identical proportion who began watching a game choosing to do so until the end of the game. This could be especially true for certain timeslots such as the lead-in to the C9/C7 Sunday news broadcasts.

FWIW I'm sure it does happen - channel surfing as a result of longer match broadcast, but it's not that big of a deal people are making.


I think my point is backed up by common sense. Viewership is largely made up of the fans of the participating teams who watch until the end of the match irrespective of the match competitiveness, 2 or 3 hour long match either way. Similarly if a game is close people don't just switch off because a game is longer. Not many people who are watching the last quarter of the Brisbane vs. Carlton game are switching that off because they're getting a bit sick of watching AFL because they're now beyond hour 2 of the broadcast. But people are genuienly claiming that.

At the end of the day fans and analysts consistently both try to draw conclusions from incomplete data (which would only prove possible if we had literal access to distributions of when and if each household began and finished their viewership, average, peak and reach are ways of summarising that data without getting into the details of such variance) as well as committing logical fallacies which are in a similar vein to Simpson's paradox, where humans are instinctively bad at making comparisons over things that have different proportions (or broadcast length) to each other.

At the end of the day we don't truly know what proportion of the reach watched 10% vs 20% vs 100%, and you can get identical reaches and averages with far different proportions which would provide for different analysis.

 

[le dominateur]

AFL is way ahead in the ratings v NRL, the gulf between the two is likely to increase in the next few weeks.



On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[weewilly]

AFL is way ahead in the ratings v NRL, the gulf between the two is likely to increase in the next few weeks.



On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

Not if you believe BS artists like bogan shyster V'Landys!

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Keep in mind that we have this data from a game in 2020 from a 2021 thread in this board:



This is further evidence of what people have been saying in this thread

• There will be periods beyond a two-hour broadcast that fewer people will watch an AFL broadcast - the beginning of the match leading into the 6pm news, for example.
• This drags down the average
• But this contributes to a greater amount of overall viewer minutes for the sport, because there's a period of time where AFL content is being played when NRL has crickets, so therefore it's gaining viewers when compared to 0 for the NRL for that equivalent minute comparison
• A greater number of people would watch AFL in a like-for-like comparison, such as the matches being played at identical times (such as the final half-hour of the match). We can deduce this from the reach and average figures provided earlier in this thread, as well as the minute-by-minute image I posted just here.

At the end of the day I'm just slicing the numbers a different way, and the overarching point is that far greater number of people watch the AFL for far longer than the NRL.

AFIAK for the interest of fairness I would also like to point out the and the advantages that the NRL has:

• The shorter game length results of those that are reached, do so in a manner that means that they're far more likely to watch greater proportions of the game, mitigating some of the loss of viewer minutes compared to the AFL's lengthier broadcast length structural advantage in the reach -> total viewer minutes conversion (a reached person watches about 40% of the NRL game on average, compared to about 33% for the AFL). Though I have made the point above there is some diminishing returns for an already-reached individual consuming a greater proportion of the match.
  • (However, it is just a mitigation, but still a weakness, because the longer broadcast length contributes to a greater average viewership length.) In other words, the average AFL viewer watches more minutes than the average NRL viewer, they just don't do so proportionally to the length of the broadcast (ie a reached individual watches 20% more minutes on average, not 50%)
• The shorter game length allows for ease of fixturing, preventing overlapping games and allowing for the placing of matches into prime-time TV timeslots. Ignoring the AFL not wanting to do this for crowd/other revenue source reasons (ie the AFL could in theory play a Thursday night game for all 25 weeks of the regular season, but choose not to), for example, the AFL cannot create four-hours of match broadcast on Friday Nights without overlapping games, in the same way that the NRL can simply because the three-hour game length makes it awkward to do so.

As pointed out many times before the NRL claim that they're the bigger sport is disingenuous at best and a flat-out lie at worst, even if it is partially true that the AFL is not converting as much of it's structural, underlying fandom into overall viewer engagement because of the two dot points I posted above - I will concede that to the NRL.

 

[Bjo187]

AFL is way ahead in the ratings v NRL, the gulf between the two is likely to increase in the next few weeks.



On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

The average punter just reads the headline. Oztam have no responsibility they just dump it all on the table for others to interpret, because they have such a wide array of industries they are covering. That's why if you're in the business of distributing the data to a particular audience (sports), it's ingenuine to not indicate what it all means, especially when you know 90 percent of people will interpret it incorrectly and use it to continue to push the bullshit nrl more eyeballs narrative.

Obviously we are on the same page generally but, to be fair, the "Total TV" figure gets its name from aggregating traditional metro, regional, BVOD measures (as well as adding estimates for rest of Aus and removing double counting). So the "Total" refers to "totalling" these disparate sources rather than a value judgement on what should be the "total" if that makes sense

Yeah that's fine I get that and I get that's how the data is released, but if you're then putting that data into a table for your audience, wouldn't you wanna be transparent in what it actually means (for your audience)? Especially when it's simply adding one word for the sake of clarity? I know I'd want my data I'm putting out in the public sphere for 'my dedicated audience' to be interpreted correctly and not used incorrectly to propagate a long held falsehood.

 

[The Educator]

The average punter just reads the headline. Oztam have no responsibility they just dump it all on the table for others to interpret, because they have such a wide array of industries they are covering. That's why if you're in the business of distributing the data to a particular audience (sports), it's ingenuine to not indicate what it all means, especially when you know 90 percent of people will interpret it incorrectly and use it to continue to push the bullshit nrl more eyeballs narrative.



Yeah that's fine I get that and I get that's how the data is released, but if you're then putting that data into a table for your audience, wouldn't you wanna be transparent in what it actually means (for your audience)? Especially when it's simply adding one word for the sake of clarity? I know I'd want my data I'm putting out in the public sphere for 'my dedicated audience' to be interpreted correctly and not used incorrectly to propagate a long held falsehood.

Agree but I think you'll probably find that you won't get anywhere arguing. Anyone who is able that has read this discussion would have already come to the same conclusion as the rest of us.

Others will probably need to wait until someone who has credibility in their eyes validates the rather basic logic at play. in the meanwhile, I would recommend just not initiating engagement with said person.

 

[The Educator]

As pointed out many times before the NRL claim that they're the bigger sport is disingenuous at best and a flat-out lie at worst, even if it is partially true that the AFL is not converting as much of it's structural, underlying fandom into overall viewer engagement because of the two dot points I posted above - I will concede that to the NRL.

I don't think that is true.

I remember a stat from an early Kayo release that the average AFL subscriber and NRL subscriber watch about the same amount eacg round (5 hours from memory)

I would suggest that the profile of actual minutes consumed for different fan types on FTA would be similar.

The point is that from the same level of engagement you get higher averages for the NRL than the AFL.

When you think about, there is no reason to think that the average AFL fan of certain life circumstances (e.g. father of two primary aged kids who likes a bit of fishing and golf) is going to have more time available to watch football on the weekend than the average NRL fan of similar life circumstances (beyond the greater number of Thursday night games historically perhaps).

If they are both tuning in at 5 30 on a Sunday after coming home with one of the kids from sport, the AFL Dad is showing up as 0.16 in the averages and the NRL Dad is adding .25 to the NRL. There is no difference in their engagement at all.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

When you think about, there is no reason to think that the average AFL fan of certain life circumstances (e.g. father of two primary aged kids who likes a bit of fishing and golf) is going to have more time available to watch football on the weekend than the average NRL fan of similar life circumstances (beyond the greater number of Thursday night games historically perhaps).

If they are both tuning in at 5 30 on a Sunday after coming home with one of the kids from sport, the AFL Dad is showing up as 0.16 in the averages and the NRL Dad is adding .25 to the NRL. There is no difference in their engagement at all.

Not saying that this isn't true, but

beyond the greater number of Thursday night games historically perhaps).

This is the key point.

My point is that the structural elements of the NRL (shorter game length, matches not overlapping, and greater preponderance of matches in prime-time slots) allows for a greater conversion of those who have some level of interest into the code into sit-down-and-watch-a-percentage-of-all-broadcast-minutes. It's not the nature of the sport but how the sport is structured around the times of the weekend which benefits the NRL. Simply because prime time exists for a reason - obviously the 20 hours Monday through Friday night from 7pm to 11pm is the time most likely where people are going to be engaged in at-home recreational activities, so the NRL logjams more of their matches into specifically that 20 window, which then makes it easier for the proportion of the population who has an equally minimum level of interest in the sport to subsequently consume a greater percentage of all the minutes of the code played over a weekend (and therefore a difference to their level of engagement).

I remember a stat from an early Kayo release that the average AFL subscriber and NRL subscriber watch about the same amount eacg round (5 hours from memory)

I think this true,

profile of actual minutes consumed for different fan types on FTA would be similar.

but this isn't.

First point is that it's only looking upon the sub-section of fans who are committed enough in order to pay for a subscription in the first place, so you can't assume it's the same for FTA broadcasters.

By the very nature of the TV data we have we can assume that there's a portion of viewers who watch Thursday/Friday night broadcasts simply because of the combined reason that a) it's on free-to-air and they just chuck the TV on on prime-time slots and they may as well turn it to sport because it's just a better program than others and b) they are sports fans, but they watch only those broadcasts because they do other things on the weekends. But because of the reach/average numbers, maybe that applies more to the AFL than the NRL, because of its 5 city presence, the lack distinction with the NRL, and longer broadcast length. Among the subsection of FTA-only viewers, perhaps more parocial.

I think this is supported by local Adelaide/Perth games being broadcast into the local market combined with more difficult stadium access for those 4 teams, compared to the 10 victorian teams. Over the course of a generation or two, this has created a greater proportion of fans that sit somewhere between hardcore (Foxtel/Kayo subscription, membership to team) and "I am aware that this sport exists and nominally follow it". Because they don't need to subscribe to watch every game for their team and it's difficult to get a cheap ticket to watch their team anyway, it's morphed into a casual viewer who may or may not watch their team on FTA (but they have an awareness that it is on FTA every week), similar how they know the Thursday and Friday broadcasts are on FTA every week too, a similar casual fan that goes back and forth. There's some survey and other similar evidence that this may apply to significantly so a large chunk (hundreds of thousands) of West Coast fans among Perth's footy-loving 2 million population. Weird start times due to time zones for eastern matches on TV in Perth further helps that argument.

 

[kalex6251]

an interesting discussion - not entirely sure im across all of it but interesting nonetheless

if anything it confirms my overarching scepticism of using viewing data as a reliable metric ..... the afl have every reason to be happy based on crowd numbers, membership, revenue and sponsorship (all hard numbers that have a long and trackable upward trajectory) .... let nrl find succour in the unknowns and grey areas of a statistical calculation

and as a final comment, media companies appear to have made their thoughts abundantly clear based on the $'s theyve thrown at the codes

 

[The Educator]

Interestingly with another Sunday NRL data point, there is an outcome that went against my initial speculations.....



Currently it appears that there is a lower ratio of reach for Sunday games than Thursday / Friday night games (albeit from a very small sample with a one off event game included)

I had thought that Sunday games may end up with inflated reach figures from people tuning into the news a minute early. In hindsight it makes sense that there would be a larger "lower engagement" cohort flicking across for the scores in prime time when a lot of people are watching TV already.

 

[The Educator]

Not saying that this isn't true, but


This is the key point.

My point is that the structural elements of the NRL (shorter game length, matches not overlapping, and greater preponderance of matches in prime-time slots) allows for a greater conversion of those who have some level of interest into the code into sit-down-and-watch-a-percentage-of-all-broadcast-minutes. It's not the nature of the sport but how the sport is structured around the times of the weekend which benefits the NRL. Simply because prime time exists for a reason - obviously the 20 hours Monday through Friday night from 7pm to 11pm is the time most likely where people are going to be engaged in at-home recreational activities, so the NRL logjams more of their matches into specifically that 20 window, which then makes it easier for the proportion of the population who has an equally minimum level of interest in the sport to subsequently consume a greater percentage of all the minutes of the code played over a weekend (and therefore a difference to their level of engagement).


I think this true,

but this isn't.

First point is that it's only looking upon the sub-section of fans who are committed enough in order to pay for a subscription in the first place, so you can't assume it's the same for FTA broadcasters.

By the very nature of the TV data we have we can assume that there's a portion of viewers who watch Thursday/Friday night broadcasts simply because of the combined reason that a) it's on free-to-air and they just chuck the TV on on prime-time slots and they may as well turn it to sport because it's just a better program than others and b) they are sports fans, but they watch only those broadcasts because they do other things on the weekends. But because of the reach/average numbers, maybe that applies more to the AFL than the NRL, because of its 5 city presence, the lack distinction with the NRL, and longer broadcast length. Among the subsection of FTA-only viewers, perhaps more parocial.

I think this is supported by local Adelaide/Perth games being broadcast into the local market combined with more difficult stadium access for those 4 teams, compared to the 10 victorian teams. Over the course of a generation or two, this has created a greater proportion of fans that sit somewhere between hardcore (Foxtel/Kayo subscription, membership to team). Because they don't need to subscribe to watch every game for their team and it's difficult to get a cheap ticket to watch their team anyway, it's morphed into a casual viewer who may or may not watch their team on FTA (but they have an awareness that it is on FTA every week), similar how they know the Thursday and Friday broadcasts are on FTA every week too, a similar casual fan that goes back and forth. There's some survey and other similar evidence that this may apply to significantly so a large chunk (hundreds of thousands) of West Coast fans among Perth's footy-loving 2 million population. Weird start times due to time zones for eastern matches on TV in Perth further helps that argument.

Yeah you make good points. The Perth time zone is another material factor.

The only thing I don't agree with is using "percentage-of-all-broadcast-minutes" as a useful metric of engagement rather than total minutes.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

The only thing I don't agree with is using "percentage-of-all-broadcast-minutes" as a useful metric of engagement rather than total minutes.

I'm only saying this because this is the basis of the NRL's claims that they're the biggest code in Australia - accumulation of average viewers over the course of a broadcast over the course of a season.

I'm trying to unpack this statement because elements of that claim are not entirely without merit (because they've been able to organise the structural elements of the sport to artifically increase their size, the points I was making above) which is entirely justified in making them think that their sport is bigger.

No doubt it's just an untrue statement given most people would assume would be "most watched" equals "total viewer minutes".

 

[Bjo187]

I'm only saying this because this is the basis of the NRL's claims that they're the biggest code in Australia - accumulation of average viewers over the course of a broadcast over the course of a season.

I'm trying to unpack this statement because elements of that claim are not entirely without merit (because they've been able to organise the structural elements of the sport to artifically increase their size, the points I was making above) which is entirely justified in making them think that their sport is bigger.

No doubt it's just an untrue statement given most people would assume would be "most watched" equals "total viewer minutes".

V'landy's used the claim in an interview the most eyeballs watch their sport. This is incorrect no matter which way you dice it, particularly when the most eyeballs would be most reflected in the reach category, regardless of time watching the particular match.

Also, if I as one person, were to watch every game possible on a weekend of afl, it would come out as 6 people watched 9 games of afl, due to the overlapping nature. If I were just the one nrl fan watching all 8 games across a weekend, it would come out as 8 people watched 8 games of nrl this weekend. The same leaguie gets counted as a different 'set of eyeballs' 8x, to the afl fan 6x despite it being more games and both fans consuming as many games in their sport across the same weekend as they possibly could.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

V'landy's used the claim in an interview the most eyeballs watch their sport. This is incorrect no matter which way you dice it, particularly when the most eyeballs would be most reflected in the reach category, regardless of time watching the particular match.

Also, if I as one person were to watch every game possible on a weekend of afl, it would come out as 6 people watched 9 games of afl, due to the overlapping nature. If I were just the one nrl fan watching all 8 games across a weekend, it would come out as 8 people watched 8 games of nrl this weekend. The same leaguie gets counted as a different 'set of eyeballs' 8x, to the afl fan 6x, across more games, despite them both trying to consume as many games in their sport as possible across the same weekend.

Maybe it's a ploy to the advertisers.

"If I was going to buy a grand total of one advertising slot on TV at random throughout the course of the entire year on either the AFL or NRL, which would likely get me more viewers?"

By some measurements the greater number might technically be the NRL. But it's a pointless question to ask!

 

[BobbyMorri]

I really don't get this discussion.

I mean, who gets the bigger TV rights deal?

That would tell you which sport is most watched. Or should I say, most valuable?

An average is an average. If you have something that goes on for a long time, then the % share of your network will be greater and you will win the ratings day/week/year. It was fairly simple.

The new Oztam system is flawed. You can't even see % of audience share on a channel. I am not against more data, but the new system has way less to give the public.

Some people take what NRL say way too seriously. He is going to keep saying it, as it gets headlines, reach or average be damned. He is a promotor, much more than any other CEO's of other sports.