Independent television audience figures just released reveal that last September’s Rally Australia, held in the Northern Rivers of NSW attracted a total worldwide view audience of more than 53 million people. It was the second most popular round of the 2009 FIA World Rally Championship.
The rally was shown on 264 channels worldwide over 862 individual broadcasts. More than 53% of the broadcasts were of 30 minutes duration or more. Within Australia the event received five and a half hours of coverage on Network Ten, an additional five and a half hours of coverage on One HD, one hour on SBS and three 30 minute segments on Fox Sports.
Chairman of the Rally Australia Board, Mr Alan Evans, described the broadcast results as “very pleasing indeed”. Mr Evans stated, “Considering this was our first event on the East Coast of Australia, and the first WRC round in Australia since 2006, to know that the rally and vision of the beautiful surroundings of Northern NSW were broadcast to more than 53 million people confirms our predictions that Repco Rally Australia is a great medium for promoting the region and NSW in general”.
“We are also delighted at the number of countries where the programmes were broadcast and especially the duration and the time slots achieved,” he said. “The majority of programmes went to air in popular time slots and were of significant duration.
“Importantly,” Mr Evans stated, “these figures do not include news programmes and sporting updates which are incorporated in normal network scheduling. No doubt there would be many more people who became aware of the event through these sources who were not viewers of the regular WRC programmes.”
Australia’s next round of the FIA World Rally Championship is scheduled to be conducted in Northern NSW in 2011.
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