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Rugby Australia: Prime time games are crucial

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Roar Guru
17th March, 2019
30

Before I mention the NRL’s massive Thursday night viewing numbers – a time-slot which will be exclusively theirs for most of the league season – it has to be asked: where have all the prime time games gone?

With circumstances completely out of anyone’s control, the Highlanders-Crusaders game was called off on Saturday morning, due to the terror attacks in Christchurch a day earlier. Yet, for the third time this season, there was no Saturday game scheduled in the pinnacle viewing time in Eastern Australia.

This meant that there was no top level rugby union on that night, so would anyone be surprised if we all switched over to league? Of course not, that’s what happens when there’s no competitor.

On Thursday night, the NRL opening game took place. There was no Super Rugby on – since a brief experiment in 2017, there have been no Thursday matches – no AFLW, A-League or NBL final, meaning the National Rugby League had nothing in its way.

The combined metro and regional ratings were 849,000.

So what does that tell us? Simply, that you schedule a game in stand-alone peak viewership time, that viewership will be significantly higher.

Rugby Australia should take notice. Twice this year there will be Sunday afternoon games at the expense of prime time Friday or Saturday night fixtures – two of the five times that this will happen.

New Zealand have got it right. Every Friday and Saturday night all season will feature at least one game. They’re not fiddling around with Sunday afternoon fixtures, however tempting they might be.

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Quade Cooper

Melbourne Rebels’s Quade Cooper (CHRISTIAAN KOTZE/AFP/Getty Images)

With four teams, each having eight home games, that’s enough for two games per round, for 16 rounds of an 18-round competition, assuming there are no aimless Sunday arvo clashes.

How easy would it be to move the Sunwolves game vs the Reds to 5:45pm Tokyo time, at 7:45pm AEDT? Whenever the Japan team are in Singapore, they play later than this, and in rounds 10 and 11 are scheduled for Friday night clashes at 8pm AEST, vs the Lions and Highlanders.

Ratings have been pretty positive this year: an underwhelming Brumbies vs Waratahs still managed 77,000, even though it was up against the biggest rivalry in rugby league, that of the Roosters and Rabbitohs.

This, while being dwarfed by the eyeballs watching the NRL, dominated the A-League who just cracked 23k for the Adelaide-Perth match-up, and NBL grand final game four, which just reached 25 thousand.

Any top level rugby that’s on, gets the nod over league for me, and there are many others who are the same. However, this weekend, I’ll be flicking from league to AFL.

Sure, come Saturday, I’ll be fixed on the 15-man game, even to the late Sunwolves match, but on Friday, Rugby Australia has given us no choice.

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