MOTORSPORT: Bathurst TV up another gear

The Australian television audience for this year’s Bathurst 1000 was the best for five years.

The 1.253 million average number of viewers in the five major state capitals for Sunday’s race was 41,000 higher than last year.

Over the past two years the telecast has recouped 207,000 of its old audience. It is now up almost 20 per cent from the low of 2010 – 1.046 million.

Even stronger has been the recovery in the number of viewers for the top 10 Shootout – helped by it being shown live again now.

Last Saturday’s Shootout averaged 935,000 viewers in the five capitals, up 30.2 per cent on last year’s 718,000 and 61.5 per cent on 2010’s 579,000.

These five-capital averages are not the total national audience, obviously (they don’t include viewers outside the Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth markets or peak figures), but they are the benchmark in on which the TV industry operates, particularly in setting its all-important advertising rates.

While Sydney remains the major market for the Bathurst telecast, Brisbane topped Melbourne last weekend for viewers of both the Shootout and the race.

Ratings agency OzTAM’s weekend reports show that Brisbane averaged 249,000 for the Shootout and 346,000 for the race. Melbourne’s comparative numbers were 229,000 and 343,000. Sydney’s figures were 303,000 and 369,000.

It has been noticeable in the almost 48 hours since Jamie Whincup’s Holden Commodore flashed across the finish line at Mt Panorama barely a car length ahead of David Reynolds’ Ford Falcon that the Seven Network has not been crowing via press release about the improved numbers for Bathurst the past couple of years.

Perhaps it has erred on the side of caution amid negotiations for renewal of the V8 Supercar TV contract that could be at a delicate stage.

Despite the latest improvement, Sunday’s five-capital figure was still 104,000 viewers, or 7.66 per cent, below the 1.357 million for the race in 2007 – the year Seven returned as the V8 Supercars telecaster after a decade of them on Ten.

As the telecaster this time around Seven has never matched the five-capital highs of the Ten era.

Sunday’s 1.253 million on Seven was 10.5 per cent below Ten’s 1.40 million for its last Bathurst in 2006, which coincided with the mourning for “King of the Mountain” Peter Brock, who had died in a tarmac rally crash in Western Australia a month before.

And last Sunday’s figure was 237,000, or 16 per cent, below the 1.49 million on Ten in 2002.

So the negotiation of a new TV contract is proceeding against a backdrop that, despite a pick-up of almost 20 per cent in its past two runnings, the key audience for the biggest race in the V8 Supercar Championship is lower than in the first year of the existing contract, lower than at the end of the previous telecaster’s contract, and only 84 per cent of what it was a decade ago.

Another part of the backdrop is that Seven and its main rival Nine have already spent massively on securing the rights to the country’s two major football codes, the AFL and NRL.

The weekend before Bathurst the AFL grand final delivered Seven a five-capitals average of more than 2.9 million viewers.

The next day the NRL grand final delivered Nine slightly more than 2.4 million viewers, while midweek in early July the deciding third rugby league state-of-origin game had more than 2.6 million sets of eyeballs on Nine.

The financial predicaments at Nine and Ten may well preclude them making serious, if any, offers for the V8 Supercar Championship TV rights, although – at the right price - it would suit Ten to regain them and rebuild itself as “the home of motorsport”.

Seven has the last right to better any other bids, but will there be any?

A TV industry expert has said of Seven: “They are not rushing [on V8 Supercars]. They are playing the long game. And waiting on others - if there are others.”

If there aren’t it raises the questions of how or whether Seven can be enticed to pay any more, or much more, for the V8 Supercar TV rights than it did last time when, despite the recent uptick at Bathurst, the audience is not what it was.

Bathurst 1000 five-capitals average viewers on Seven:

2007    1.357 million
2008    1.249 million
2009    1.182 million
2010    1.046 million
2011     1.212 million
2012    1.253 million

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