MOTORSPORT: V8s too free with TV comparison

COMMENT

Certainly the Seven network's telecast of the 13th round of the V8 Supercar Championship at Melbourne's Sandown circuit produced better viewing figures than rival Nine's coverage of the Presidents Cup at the Royal Melbourne course.

That was something of a surprise, but most surprising was how bad the golf figures were. Anyway, the V8 Supercar release claimed that its racing "easily out-rated" the golf.

V8 Supercars Australia chairman Tony Cochrane talked of Sandown winning the "bigger overall audience".

"To win a bigger overall audience, and perform so strongly in key demographics against the much-hyped Presidents Cup with millions of State Government funds tipped into the golf, demonstrates the passion and loyalty of V8 fans," Cochrane said.

Except that it wasn't a bigger OVERALL audience. What this V8SA press release failed to mention, in drawing on the audience figures from TV ratings agency OzTAM, was that the Presidents Cup also was screened live on Fox Sports as well as Nine.

And when the Fox Sports numbers are added to the Nine audience the Presidents Cup came out ahead – and well ahead on the Saturday, the day of the V8 Supercar season's best race in atrociously wet conditions.

According to OzTAM's data, the average audience in Australia's five major state capitals for Sandown on Saturday was 306,000 viewers and on Sunday it was 417,000. The comparative figures for Nine's golf were 283,000 and 299,000.

Quite easily found in the OzTAM data at tvtonight.com.au, under ratings, are the Fox Sports numbers for the golf – 121,000 on Saturday and 134,000 on Sunday. Adding the Nine and Fox audiences together, the average live audience for the Presidents Cup in the five capitals was 404,000 on Saturday and 433,000 on Sunday.

So the golf had 98,000 more than Seven's Sandown telecast in the five capitals on Saturday and 16,000 more on Sunday. Quite a different picture to what the V8SA press release painted, relying only on the free-to-air figures that had Sandown ahead of the golf by 23,000 viewers on Saturday and 118,000 on Sunday.

Equally curious with the V8SA release is that, while it was circulated direct to a list of media, it appears not to have been posted on V8 Supercars' website – and Seven didn't rush in to make any grandiose claims.

V8 Supercars may have been peeved that the Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper golf columnist Christian Nicolussi drew attention the previous week to the Australian Open golf having pulled an average 491,000 viewers on the Ten network compared with Seven's 301,000 for the V8s from Symmons Plains in Tasmania on Sunday, November 13.

Golf is not drawing the audiences it once did, and in Oz fewer watched the Presidents Cup than the Australian Open. But the reality is that the Sandown V8 telecast numbers were ordinary too – little changed from the year before (up a bit this time on Saturday and down a bit on Sunday), and ringing alarm bells ahead of next week's season finale, the Sydney 500.

Two weeks before that "grand final", the Sandown racing – excellent as it was, particularly on Saturday – did not draw anywhere near 100,000 viewers in Sydney either day. Yet again Sydney had only the third biggest audience in the country for the V8s, behind Brisbane (No. 1) and Melbourne.

Saturday's 306,000 five-capitals average comprised 66,000 in Sydney, 86,000 in Melbourne, 91,000 in Brisbane, 45,000 in Adelaide and 18,000 in Perth. Sunday's 417,000 consisted of 88,000 in Sydney, 113,000 in Melbourne, 124,000 in Brisbane, 61,000 in Adelaide and 30,000 in Perth. So the Sydney average for the two days was 77,000 (66,000 + 88,000 = 154,000 ÷2 = 77,000).

That is a worrying indicator of interest in V8 Supercars in Australia's biggest city so close to the title-deciding Sydney 500, although the racing at Homebush is complemented in the evenings by rock concerts - which boost attendance at the venue but don't help the TV audience.

And, as pointed out here 10 months ago, the TV audiences for the Sydney 500 on the streets of Homebush have not been as good as those when V8 Supercars raced at Eastern Creek much further out in the city's west.

The five-capitals average for the Sunday race at Homebush last year was 421,000.

The average for Sandown last Sunday, the penultimate race before this year's "grand final", was 417,000.

Both these numbers are barely a third the average audience of the much longer Bathurst 1000 – up this year to about 1.2 million but still well short of what it was years ago.

A European contact advises that the average TV audience for rounds of the German Touring Car Championship – or DTM - is about 2 million viewers.

A week out from the reveal of V8 Supercars' Car of the Future Holden and Ford prototypes – and perhaps some news on a third marque participating from 2013 - that contact also advised that Mercedes and Audi have confirmed eight factory-backed cars each for next year's DTM while BMW will return with four factory cars.

In America, the 36th and final race of NASCAR's Sprint Cup season at Homestead speedway in Florida last Monday morning, Australian time, averaged 6.799 million viewers on ESPN – the largest audience for a NASCAR race on that cable network, topping the 2008 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.

This year's Chase – the "mini-series" in the final 10 rounds of the Sprint Cup for the title, which Chevrolet driver Tony Stewart thrillingly won on a tie-breaker from Ford's long-time series leader Carl Edwards – drew almost 15 per cent higher ratings than last year.

These American and European numbers reflect that V8 Supercars, although expanding internationally, is still a very long way behind NASCAR and the DTM in the bigger scheme of things. And, while it is rightly proud of its overseas TV deals in the past couple of years, surely there would have been a greater international audience for the Presidents Cup last weekend than for 28 Aussie and Kiwi drivers circulating at Sandown.

All the TV numbers reviewed this week reminded this author to bear in mind the words of Benjamin Disraeli that "there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics." And also those of Andrew Lang: "He uses statistics like a drunken man uses lamp-posts  for support rather than illumination."

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