NRL Grand Final delivers Nine big Sydney audience, but historically small crowd

The one-sided 2022 NRL Grand Final between Penrith and Parramatta has delivered one of the biggest Sydney TV audiences of the year.

However, the numbers are down historically with 2,756,000 tuning in around Australia.

Preliminary data suggests this is the second-smallest NRL Grand Final audience in the OzTAM era which goes back two decades. People will start constructing a myriad of reasons as to what is behind the result. The real story is that NRL remains a big drawcard for audiences and advertisers, but not as big as it used to be.

The streaming audience this year grew again, making it the biggest 9Now streaming audience watching an NRL Grand Final.

The breakdown of the 2022 audiences is as follows:

2022: 2,756,000 (Metro 1,671,000 Regional 696,000 Streaming 389,000)

This compares to the last three years:

2021: 3,596,000 (Metro 2,202,000 Regional 1,031,000 Streaming 363,000)
2020: 3,119,000 (Metro 2,103,000 Regional 863,000 Streaming 153,000)
2019: 2,725,000 (Metro 1,866,000 Regional 775,000 Streaming 84,000)

The biggest TV audience since 2000 is 4,103,000 in 2005 which featured West Tigers up against North Queensland Cowboys.

TV audiences got very close to 4m in 2014 (3,986,000) and 2012 (3,958,000).

The 2022 audience wasn’t the smallest ever in Sydney with 837,000 watching. What was down though were the numbers around the rest of Australia with 252,000 in Melbourne. That appears to be the second smallest NRL Grand Final audience watching in the Victorian capital since 234,000 in 2010.

The numbers for other metro markets were Brisbane 391,000, Adelaide 77,000 and Perth 114,000.

The Brisbane crowd in particular didn’t warm to the all-Sydney match, particularly after halftime when the result was clear. In previous years the presence of the Brisbane Broncos in the final match of the year saw the Brisbane numbers climb as high as 800,000 in 2006. The Broncos were triumphant over the Storm that year.

TV Ratings Sunday October 2, 2022