Well, the Rugby World Cup is upon us and so far South Africa has won – so we’re all riding on the high of our victories. 

This week we bring you the TV viewership information pertaining to the World Cup Rugby to date. This analysis has been run from the kick off until the 20th of September. 

The below graph shows us the overall audience ratings, by station, per game against All Adults (aged 15+). The opening ceremony achieved just less than 4 AR’s with SABC 2 having the highest ratings. Our two SA games (included in this analysis) however are the highest achieving games so far, and we are sure that tomorrow’s game against Samoa and our fantastic win against Nambia will achieve similar ratings too! 



Then, another game to look at - Even though this game was only broadcast on Supersport, it is interesting to see how well the Ireland vs Australia game did. Almost the same ratings as the Bok game SA vs Fiji. Maybe a sign of things to come?



It is however more interesting to look at the thousands of people reached than at AR’s! Just over 3.5 million people in total watched the first SA game and just less than 3.5 million people watched the second game. The first game of the RWC comes in at third place with just over 1.5 million having watched New Zealand vs Tonga! 

We have no doubt that the time differences are having an impact on the audience ratings as many people are at work and unable to watch morning TV. We won’t be seeing the 11 million viewers as we did with Soccer World Cup opening game, however if we do reach the final – it will be interesting to see what a Sunday morning at 10h00 will deliver!