Nine's premiere of Australian Ninja Warrior season two has won in all key demographics overnight, taking out the top spot with 929,000 metro viewers.
Despite the win and conquering the other network's obstacles of House Rules and MasterChef, the popular physical challenge entertainment program was unable to recreate 2017's ratings bonanza of 1.64 million metro viewers.
Compared to the season one premiere, last nights debut was down 700,000 viewers.
The show had a national average audience of 1.32m overnight, down close to one million viewers from 2017.
Nine's head of content production and development, Adrian Swift previously told AdNews the network had set expectations high for the second season, expecting Ninja to repeat the ratings magic, especially as the show has been extended to four weeks.
See: Nine reveals Ninja sponsors, promises to up the ante in 2018
He said it was tough to predict if the show will outperform the debut season, but is confident there will be "more runs on the board" when it comes to digital viewership.
The show returned with both new and old contestants last night, as they were subjected to new, and more challenging tasks.
Only 20 contestants from the heats are going through to the show's 'semi-finals', with contestants from Perth's Ninja Academy dominating the top 10.
Nine just pipped Seven to the post when it came to the overnight main channel share race, taking a 21.7% share compared to Seven's 20.7%.
Seven's House Rules came second in the primetime slot, with just under 100,000 viewers less than Ninja, with a metro audience of 835,000 viewers.
MasterChef came third in the time slot, drawing 748,000 viewers.
Below is a breakdown of TV ratings performance, across all the key demographics in commercial share, supplied by Nine.
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