Hobart hits never-before-seen-heights - and the numbers prove it!

• NEWS
• 07 Apr, 2020 08:51:00 AM

Hobart hits never-before-seen-heights - and the numbers prove it!

The historic 2019 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race has been lauded as arguably the most successful in the history of the event, with metrics showing the event attracted more interest, viewers and engagement than ever before.

According to Meltwater, a total of almost four billion people – yes, four billion – across Australia and around the world were reached online via digital channels throughout the 2019 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. This represents the largest-known figure for the event in its 75-year history, with an additional 124 million reached by Australian print audiences and millions more via domestic and international broadcasts.

The 2019 Rolex Sydney Hobart, which featured the fourth-largest fleet in the history, smashed records across a number of areas, with the official race website attracting an additional two million page views across the monitored period compared with 2018, and the Channel 7 race-start broadcast reaching 2.08 million Australians on Boxing Day.

In 2019, for the first time ever the CYCA produced and managed race-end broadcasts, of both the line-honours finish and the overall handicap battle, thanks to support from Tourism Tasmania. These broadcasts attracted huge audiences both on Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race digital platforms and via traditional broadcasters across Australia and around the world, who received the CYCA’s feeds.

More than 388,000 viewers tuned in to RolexSydneyHobart.com, YouTube and the official race Facebook page to watch Comanche’s line-honours triumph, consuming more than 1,008,000 minutes’ of content. Never-before-seen broadcasts of the line-honours finish and the overall handicap battle were also syndicated more than 40 times across the country and around the world, via Fox Sports Asia, Fox Sports Australia and ABC Australia channels in addition to online streaming audiences on 7Plus and Kayo. Further to this, more than 110,000 viewers – consuming 298,500 minutes – watched the overall-honours video broadcast on RSHYR channels.

The official Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race page on Facebook reached 2,873,846 individuals during the period, almost double that of 2018, with the race’s Instagram account attracting an increase of 9,837 followers – or 117 per cent – year on year.

CYCA Commodore Paul Billingham said the historic 75th Sydney Hobart Yacht Race would rightly go down in history.

“The 2019 Rolex Sydney Hobart was a huge success and an event of global significance that the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, Members of the Club, participants, management, staff and volunteers can be immensely proud of,” Commodore Billingham said.

“The engagement figures across the race – from the Channel 7 broadcast on Boxing Day, the media interest, the race-end broadcasts syndicated across Australia and around the world – are immense.  While the supermaxis make a fine sight, this year in particular Channel 7 worked hard to focus on the stories surrounding the fleet and listened to feedback from previous years – 64 per cent of the broadcast focused on the main fleet in 2019, up from 16 per cent in 2018.

“We couldn’t be more proud of the event – and the audience it received in Sydney, in Hobart, across Australia and around the world. In this respect alone it goes down in history as the most successful Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race ever.

“Thank you to all involved, in particular the management, staff, volunteers and participants – and, of course, our incredible partners and specifically Rolex, whose longstanding support of the race has allowed the CYCA to continually raise the bar.

“We can’t wait for the 2020 Rolex Sydney Hobart.”