More than two million State of Origin fans tuned in to the final game of the series last night – helping Nine to take almost double the free-to-air audience share of closest rival Seven.
A total of 2.049 million people saw the Maroons' victory over the Blues broadcast on Channel Nine, while a further 92,000 fans watched the game in Perth on Gem.
The match coverage took out the top two, and the fifth, most-watched free-to-air TV programs last night, with the pre-match coverage also winning an audience of 1.378 million on Nine (plus 46,000 in Perth on Gem) and the post-match analysis pulled in 1.236 million (plus 63,000 in Perth).
As a result, Network Nine won the biggest free-to-air audience share by far, with 39.6%. Seven followed with 21.1%, and Ten took 18.3%.
As the match wasn't a decider, the numbers were down on the second State of Origin match last month, which saw the Blues take the title for the first time in nine years and won a huge 2.6 million-strong audience.
Meanwhile, Ten's MasterChef Australia held strong around the million mark, with an audience of 971,000 across Australia's five metro areas.
Other than Home and Away on Seven, in 10th spot with an audience of 922,000, news programs dominated the rest of the top 10, according to preliminary overnight ratings figures from OzTam.
Nine News won the biggest news audience, with 1.286 million viewers putting it in third place, followed by Seven News, in fourth with an audience of 1.253 million.
Completing the top 10 was Nine News at 6.30, sixth with 1.178 million viewers, Seven's Today Tonight, seventh with 1.136 million, and Nine's A Current Affair, eighth with 1.023 million.
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