AFL Grand Final draws biggest TV audience since 2016
The 2025 AFL Grand Final drew record TV crowds
Saturday’s AFL Grand Final managed to pull the largest TV audience of 2025, with over six million viewers tuning in to watch Brisbane trounce Geelong over the weekend.
According to the Oztam ratings, the game was the most-watched AFL Grand Final since 2016, pipping last year’s Brisbane Lions finals victory by just 9,000 viewers. It was also the most-watched TV program of the year, beating State of Origin III’s 5.7 million viewership on Nine.
Not only did the game itself draw 6.1 million viewers to Seven — with an average audience of over 4 million watching at any given point — the entire day’s viewing was dominated by footy finals fever, with 12 hours of AFL programming throughout the day. From 6am to 6pm, Seven held 81.1% of commercial TV share (Nine, Seven, Ten).
The leading claim for the 2025 AFL Grand Final was the “the game was the most-watched AFL Grand Final since 2016” is stretching the claim of the data.
Back in 2016 the OzTAM TV ratings reported ‘average audience per program’. Now, in the ‘New World’ OzTAM also supplies the ‘Nett’ audience which includes anyone who watched even a very short viewing period (say, a minute) as being equal to the viewing of those who watched (let’s say) every minute of the Grand Final.
Having said that. the calculation is mathematical legitimate. But it is NOT a legitimate comparison of the 2016 data with the 2025 data.