2011 AFL TV Ratings

The information below is found in the AFL 2011 Annual report.

Season

The 2011 Toyota AFL Premiership Season continued to attract strong audiences across both free-to-air and subscription television attracting an average 4.05 million viewers per
round nationally.

Free-to-air regional markets drew strong viewership with an overall increase of 1.4 per cent, while free-to-air mainland capital cities dropped by 4.4 per cent. Strong audiences on Fox Sports saw an increase of 18.1 per cent across all matches in 2011, providing for a national average audience per game of 184,077 compared to 155,836 in 2010.

For industry comparative purposes, viewership across all programming on free-to-air networks fell 10.9 per cent in 2011 as a result of continued fragmentation in the market, including but not
limited to an increase in the number of free-to-air multi channels.

The most-watched Toyota AFL Premiership Season games in 2011 on metropolitan and regional free-to-air TV were:

˭ Essendon v Collingwood, Anzac Day, national average audience 1.43 million.
˭ Geelong Cats v Collingwood, round eight, 1.30 million.
˭ Collingwood v Carlton, round three, 1.14 million.
˭ West Coast Eagles v Geelong Cats, round 16, 1.07 million.
˭ Carlton v Geelong Cats, round eight, 1.05 million.
˭ Hawthorn v Geelong Cats, round five, 1.05 million.
˭ Collingwood v Geelong Cats, round 24, 1.04 million.
˭ St Kilda v Collingwood, round 21, 1 million.
˭ Brisbane Lions v St Kilda, round five, 984,000.
˭ Gold Coast Suns v Geelong Cats, round 10, 982,000.

Finals

The four games in week one of the Toyota AFL Finals Series attracted a cumulative national audience of 5.21 million people, the cumulative audience for the two games in week two was
2.82 million, while the cumulative national audience for the two preliminary finals was 3.17 million.

The Toyota AFL Grand Final continued to be the most-watched annual sporting event held in Australia, with a national average audience on Network Ten of 3,571,262 in 2011. 80 per cent of all television sets in use on the day were tuned into the Grand Final.

Foxtel

The inaugural meeting between the Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast Suns, QClash 1, attracted a record audience for an AFL match on subscription TV with a national average of 357,882.
St Kilda’s meeting with Essendon in round three was the next most-watched game on subscription TV with a national average audience of 306,000.

Radio

On average, 1.4 million people listened to AFL matches during the radio survey periods four-six in 2011.

Online

The AFL/Telstra Network continued to be Australia’s most-visited online sports destination in 2011, with an average of more than 4.35 million unique visitors a month during the premiership season – an increase of 13 per cent on 2010.

Toyota AFL Dream Team continued to be afl.com.au’s flagship online game in 2011 with more than 300,000 players taking part, while more than 170,000 tipsters participated in QuitNow AFL Tipping.

Significantly in 2011, AFL Media also became the official supplier of video content to afl.com.au, overseeing a dramatic increase in the viewing of editorial video on afl.com.au. Video consumption
during the premiership season totalled 4.9 million video plays, a 319 per cent increase on 2010.

The official Collingwood website continued to be the most popular club website in 2011, averaging more than 250,000 monthly visitors during the premiership season. All clubs averaged
more than 50,000 monthly unique users, while nine clubs averaged more than 100,000.