The data economics of Matildas Mania

Welcome to Tuesdata, our weekly analysis for Unmade’s paying members.

Below, we examine the numbers behind the cultural phenomenon of the rise of the Matildas.

Further down, the Seven West Media share price hits its lowest point since the height of Covid, while Enero also has a rough day.

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Ratings record breaking with the Matildas

Seja Al Zaidi writes:

There hasn’t been a public phenomenon quite like the Matildas for a very long time. Australia’s shared cultural moment has been a month-long ratings bonanza for Seven, vindicated the investments of long term sponsors including CommBank and Qantas and has changed the commercial trajectory of Football Australia.

The numbers have been extraordinary. The Matildas’ semi final clash with England became the top-rated program in the history of Australian television. Below, we examine various data sets, including social sentiment via Meltwater, brand sentiment via Tracksuit and audience numbers via OzTam and Deakin University research.

Across the month, the tournament reached an estimated 18.6m free to air viewers watching at home. That’s despite most games that did not involve Australia being behind the paywall of streaming service Optus.

The most remarkable numbers came from last Wednesday night’s semi final between Australia and England. It averaged 7.2 million viewers for Seven, across metro and regional broadcast viewing, along with streaming via 7plus. Overall reach was even higher, with the ratings system registering 11.15m viewer seeing at least part of the game.

That compares to an average audience of 976,000 viewers for the final of the men’s version of the Qatar World Cup on SBS back in 2022.

But the real viewing number is likely to be much higher – the panel-based ratings system only calculated viewing at home, not in hospitality venues or public viewing areas. And Optus did not share the number of people viewing via its app.

Research conducted by Deakin University’s Dr Hunter Fujak estimated the reach of the England game across Channel 7, Optus Sport, venues and live sites was 17.15 million people. That represents approximately 64% of the entire Australian population.

Fujak’s estimate was based on asking a sample of 1564 respondents across Deakin’s alumni network how they had watched the match, and extrapolating the numbers based on the proportion who would not have been recorded via the traditional ratings system.

He predicts that on top of the 11.15m people watching via the Channel 7 telecast, a further 3.01m watched at a hospitality venue, 1.74m streamed via Optus Sport and 1.25m attended various national live sites.

It has become increasingly clear that viewing numbers beat those of the Olympics, when Australia’s entire population was only just over 19m. Until now, Cathy Freeman’s Olympic sprint in 2000 was believed to have been the most watched TV moment of all time.

How Unmade previewed the event last month:

According to Fujak: “The 17.15m viewers of the Matildas semi-final is without doubt the most viewed event in Australian history.”

The out-of-norm impact on viewing patterns is demonstrated by the chart of metro viewing so far this year, with Seven pulling in an astonishing 56.5% commercial share of last week’s metro viewing.

However, while fuelling Seven’s bragging rights, the ratings bonanza has not translated into game changing commercial dollars for the network.

Although Seven got the free to air rights for a reported bargain $4m, commercial and sponsorship revenue was shared with the main rights holder Optus. And as Seven West Media CEO James Warburton bemoaned during last week’s investor briefings, unlike AFL or cricket, ads cannot be shown during the game.

Sold-out sponsorships

FIFA’s first-ever dedicated Women’s World Cup partnership programme sold out with a line-up of brands from across the globe before the games begun. All FIFA Women’s World Cup global and regional sponsorship positions were signed or in final contracting stages by the time the Cup began, on July 20.

That includes Unilever brands like Rexona, Dove, Lifebuoy and Lux. Hyundai and Kia were FIFA’s official mobility partners, while Visa, Wanda, Adidas, Coca Cola, Qatar Airways and Xero also took out partner positions.

Meanwhile, the Matildas had their own sponsors including Commbank, Rebel Sport, Network Ten / Paramount, Qantas, Priceline, Cadbury and Lego.

The investment, negotiated on a smaller audience than was eventually delivered, was worthwhile for sponsors and partners – 42% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a brand that actively promotes and supports women’s sports over brands who do not. That’s data from Tracksuit, which surveys and monitors consumer sentiment about brands.

Tracksuit’s findings also reveal that 45% of men and 39% of women say they are more likely to purchase from a brand backing female sport.

Though Australia is waking up to top level women’s sport – AFLW has moved forward fastest – the men’s codes still tend to get the attention and the marketing investment. Even Matildas sponsor CommBank failed to make its sponsorship evident on its own home page.

Social buzz

Media monitoring company Meltwater, which collects consumer insights and data, tracked social media mentions of the Matildas and WWC since January 1, 2023, finding there have been 6.22 million global broadcast and social mentions of the Women’s World Cup in total – that’s an astounding boost compared to just 1.92 million in the previous corresponding period.

The United States was the most active with their social engagement over the month, with Australia coming in fourth place with around that level of engagement (despite a far smaller population size).

There were 7.55k Matildas social mentions during Wednesday night’s game with the highest spike at 9:20pm after Sam Kerr’s goal.

The Matildas had 818k social mentions in the last 30 days, a 962% increase compared to the previous 30 days, with 176k of these being in Australia.

Google Trends shows an enormous spike in search term ‘Matildas’ over the last month. There was scarce interest for years, with the term picking up traction slightly throughout 2022 and only skyrocketing over the last thirty days.

On Wednesday night, four out of five of Australia’s top trending topics on Google concerned women’s soccer players. The game that saw the Matildas eviscerated by England was the most followed topic of the day.

The wild success of the WWC is likely to set a precedent for valuing women’s sports rights more competitively.

The next men’s FIFA World Cup is in 2026, with the women’s matches a year after – and with advertiser interest expected to climb significantly after record ratings figures for this year, broadcasters are anticipated to battle it out competitively to secure the rights. Despite SBS retaining the rights since 1990, Nine, Seven and Ten, all which operate their own streaming arms, could very well indulge in a bidding war.

Unmade Index flattens as Seven’s freefall continues

It was another dip on the Unmade Index yesterday, starting the week more calmly than last week. It fell 0.21% to land at 643.2 points.

However, Seven West Media saw a fall of another 7.25% – taking it down to a market capitalisation of below half a billion dollars. The stock has now lost nearly 20% of its value over the last week after an uninspiring end of financial year update.

How Unmade covered last week’s SWM results

The last time Seven’s share price was this low was in December 2020.

Enero Group suffered a similar fate, tumbling 11.52% after last week’s update which alarmed the market about its advertising arbitrage unit OBMedia.

The audio players also fared poorly. Southern Cross Austereo dropped 2.50%, while ARN Media fell 1.96%.

The winner of the day was Ooh Media, rising 5.84% on a solid half-year results announcement. Unmade will offer further analysis of Ooh Media’s performance later in the week.

IVE Group scored a 1.70% rise, and Domain saw a modest 0.83% lift.

That’s all for today. Thanks, as ever, supporting us through your membership.

We’ll be back with more tomorrow.

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