Katy Perry performs after the Women's T20 World Cup final match between Australia and India (Image: AAP/Scott Barbour)

The final of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup was hugely popular last night. It caught 825,000 viewers on Nine’s Gem — even though the network did not separate the presentation part of the final, as it does for men’s sports such as the NRL Grand Final. Foxtel did and, across the two innings, the innings break and post game, it averaged 293,000. For the two broadcasts, that’s a total of 1.11 million people.

So why wasn’t the cricket on Nine’s main channel? Well, Nine has the 2020 NRL season starting on Thursday night and if it had ditched Married At First Sight last night for the T20 final it wouldn’t have been able to fit the four eps into the rest of the week.

Nine and the NRL could have vacated the Thursday night to allow for the world cup final to be on the main channel and then four eps of MAFS to be broadcast. After all, Nine started MAFS on a Monday night when the men’s Australian Open final was on the Sunday night back in February. Doing this would have involved a bet on Australia making their way to the final, but they were favourites.

Unfortunately Nine didn’t take the risk, and so it gave preference to a male-dominated sport rather than a showpiece global final on International Women’s Day. Well done, guys!

Network channel share

  1. Nine (43.3%)
  2. Seven (21.0%)
  3. Ten (14.6%)
  4. ABC (14.3%)
  5. SBS (6.1%)

Network main channels

  1. Nine (25.0%)
  2. Seven (13.2%)
  3. ABC (10.3%)
  4. Ten (9.2%)
  5. SBS ONE (3.8%)

Top five digital channels 

  1. Gem (13.1%)
  2. GO, 10 Bold (3.5%)
  3. 7mate (3.4%)
  4. 7TWO (2.9%)

Top 10 national programs

  1. MAFS (Nine) —1.339 million
  2. 60 Minutes (Nine) — 1.204 million
  3. Seven News — 1.139 million 
  4. Nine/NBN News   — 1.017 million
  5. 7pm ABC News — 864,000
  6. Womens T20 World Cup Final, Australia vs India (Gem) — 825,000
  7. MKR (Seven) — 630,000
  8. Grand Designs (ABC) — 601,000
  9. Stateless (ABC) —507,000
  10. Dancing With The Stars  (Ten) — 505,000

Metro news and current affairs

  1. 60 Minutes (Nine) — 842,000
  2. Seven News — 789,000
  3. Nine News — 766,000
  4. 7pm ABC News — 594,000
  5. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 286,000
  6. Ten News First — 262,000
  7. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 222,000
  8. SBS World News  — 133,000

Morning (national) TV

  1. Insiders (ABC. ABC News) — 585,000
  2. Weekend Sunrise (Seven) — 442,000
  3. Landline (ABC) —385,000
  4. Weekend Today (Nine) — 285,000 
  5. Offsiders (ABC) — 227,000
  6. Sports Sunday (Nine) — 184,000

Top five pay TV programs

  1. Cricket: ICC T20 World Cup Final: Australia v India – Innings Break (Fox Cricket) — 379,000
  2. Cricket: ICC T20 World Cup Final: Australia v India –  (Fox Cricket) — 315,000
  3. Cricket: ICC T20 World Cup Final: Australia v India – Post Game (Fox Cricket) — 290,000
  4. Cricket: ICC T20 World Cup Final: Australia v India –  (Fox Cricket) — 237,000
  5. ODI: South Africa vs Australia (Fox Cricket) — 117,000