The addition of a second game has spurred Fox Sports to trumpet its highest audience for a regular-season simulcast Friday night match as it eats into Channel Nine's one-time monopoly in the timeslot.
NRL bean counters will be ecstatic with the year-on-year overall growth for the first Friday night match of the season shown on both channels, but it will be the subscription provider and the brains trust behind Fox League that will be most pleased.
Having converted viewers with a new 6pm match on Friday night – exclusive to Fox League – the channel recorded its biggest audience for a simulcast Friday night match outside the NRL finals.
An average audience of 270,000 tuned in to watch Robbie Farah's rendezvous with the Wests Tigers and Greg Inglis' subsequent season-ending knee injury.
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By comparison Channel Nine recorded a national average audience of 695,000 for the Tigers-Rabbitohs clash on free to air and television executives predict the gap between the two networks will continue to narrow in coming months as league fans make use of watching both Friday night matches on the one channel.
Fox Sports' average audience was 274,000 for the Bulldogs-Storm clash played in driving rain at Belmore, meaning they lost just 4000 viewers despite Channel Nine also screening the later Friday night match.
The Bulldogs-Storm grudge match was also the No.1 program on subscription TV to date this year.
It proves while NRL clubs will have trouble attracting fans through the gate for 6pm matches on the eastern seaboard – just a little more than 8000 fans battled Sydney traffic and horrible weather to be at Belmore – the slot is likely to prove a winner with television viewers.
Channel Nine's audience peaked at 918,000 as the Tigers blasted the Rabbitohs, but interest waned when the James Tedesco-led joint venture put the result beyond doubt shortly after half-time.
The two networks have gone to great lengths to win the ratings war before the start of the season, with Fox Sports poaching Channel Nine's anchor Yvonne Sampson over summer, but it might be head office which is the eventual winner.
Seven per cent more people tuned in across both networks for the Tigers-Rabbitohs clash as opposed to the Sea Eagles-Bulldogs corresponding fixture last season.
Fox Sports launched its rugby league-only channel last week to complement its AFL Fox Footy offering.
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