Post-season State of Origin looks all but certain to never occur again, with a return to a mid-year Origin series in 2021 a certainty after yet another TV ratings blow, as per The Daily telegraph.
Nationally across five-city metro markets, 1.654 million Australians tuned to see the Blues smash the Maroons in Sydney.
A slight improvement from the first game of the series, which came in at 1.6 million.
Wednesday night's clash also saw aย significant decline of 16 per cent or 300,000+ viewers on the second game of 2019, which came in at 1.96 million.
Including regional markets, Origin II was the most-watched TV of the night with some 2.43 million Australians watching the game, a drop of more than 13 per cent on last yearโs 2.8 million viewers.
Origin is traditionally played in the middle of the NRL season, however due to the impact of COVID-19 it meant moving the annual blockbuster to November.
The disappointing ratings result comes as the NRL is preparing to negotiate its free-to-air television rights deal.
ARLC Chairman Peter Vโlandys said the future of State of Origin matches being played in November was highly unlikely.
โMore likely than not that this (State of Origin series) will be the one and only time (in November) because the ratings werenโt very good last week,โ Vโlandys said.
โI know there have been a few excuses and weโll see if those excuses are credible come Wednesday night when itโs a live rubber. And I think one of the reasons why the ratings were down was that no one gave Queensland a chance, but anyone that follows rugby league, you always give Queensland a chance and they proved that again.
"Next year is a different story and if weโre able to have crowds, mid-season is probably the right place but letโs just see what happens tomorrow night.
