Sheikh Mohammed and his Godolphin stables have won their first Melbourne Cup just as Seven West Media has won what will be its final Melbourne Cup – for now.
With the broadcast rights converting to Network 10 from 2019, Seven confronted all sorts of weather on its final coverage of the first Tuesday in November from Flemington.
Viewing of sports is much more than the linear TV audience these days, but on this measure Seven still attracted a big crowd, very close to last year’s audience.
The TV audience for the 2018 Melbourne Cup was 2,489,000 with metro 1,836,000 and regional 653,000.
That compares with corresponding numbers of 2,520,000 with 1,815,000 metro and 705,000 regional last year.
Seven has just released a breakdown of data for the 2018 race that stops the nation:
The Melbourne Cup 2018
• Seven reached 4.4m broadcast viewers nationally (3.1m metro)
• Race peaked at 2.7m combined viewers (1.9m metro)
• Seven delivered a 96% commercial share in Melbourne during The Race and dominated all demographics
• #1 program this week
• The Race averaged 2.5m broadcast viewers combined (Metro + Regional)
• 17.0m live streaming minutes (+56%) vs last year (10.9m). Seven’s highest streaming day for sporting content since Commonwealth Games (April 8 and 9)
• 28.1m minutes total (Live+VOD), Seven’s highest streaming day since 2016 Rio Olympics
• 11.6m live streamed minutes for Melbourne Cup coverage, up +38% on last year
• Seven’s highest live streaming minutes for sporting content outside of Commonwealth Games and Rio (surpassing all WO, AO Finals, Super Bowl and previous Melbourne Cups)
Social reach for Melbourne Cup day:
• 7HorseRacing Facebook: 1,176,243 reach
• 7HorseRacing Instagram: 24,256 reach
• 7HorseRacing Twitter: 373.4k impressions
Twitter Livestream of Melbourne Cup:
• 49.5k minutes watched
• 39.5k views
• 29.2k viewers