Wednesday night’s first State of Origin rugby league match was the highest-rating game since 2016, drawing an average national audience of 3.4 million viewers across Nine’s* linear TV network and its streaming platform 9Now.

The game, which saw Queensland trounce New South Wales 38 points to 10, was the top-rating program of Wednesday night in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, where it was watched by 934,000, 809,000 and 287,000 people respectively.

The relatively low figure for Melbourne, where the second match of the three-game series will be held on June 26, suggests there is still potential for growth in Victoria.

The audience figure combines audience numbers for the five mainland capital cities and regional viewership numbers alongside live viewing on 9Now for what ratings agency OzTAM calls the Total TV audience. This is the first full year in which the new measure has been adopted as the industry standard.

The broadcast video on demand (BVOD) number – which captures viewing via smart TVs and other devices – is also recorded as a separate entry, and on that measure, 760,000 watched game one making it the highest rating program of all time on 9Now, and the second-highest live BVOD program of all time, behind only the Matildas World Cup soccer semi-final against England, which was watched by 957,000 people on 7Plus last August.

The total audience for that game, of 7.13 million, make it the most watched TV program of any sort since the OzTAM audience measurement system started in 2001.

The most-watched program on BVOD, however, remains the 28-minute Bluey episode The Sign, which has been streamed more than 3.5 million times to date.

Wednesday night’s result illustrates the degree to, and speed with, which live sports viewing is growing in importance as a platform through which free to air broadcasters can reach audience – and why the ratings system had to evolve to capture it.