The first State of Origin was always going to be big -it was just a question of how big.

In the end a massive 2.43m viewers watched the Maroons defeat the Blues at ANZ Stadium, making it the biggest audience so far in 2015.

Sydney tuned in with a whopping 1.09m viewers, with 769,000 in Brisbane and 380,000 in Melbourne.

1.55m watched the pre-match and 1.02m stayed for the post-match. The only title it couldn’t grab was outranking 2014’s 2.6m viewers for Game I.

Nine stormed the night with more than double Seven in share -but it’s a given that Seven does not program competitively against such dominance and offers a staggered schedule.

Elsewhere MasterChef held up well against Sport for TEN. Nine also had wins with A Current Affair and Today.

Nine network pulled a 44.4% share then Seven 21.3%, TEN 17.2%, ABC 12.4% and SBS 4.7%.

Following the Origin numbers, A Current Affair hit a 2015 high (1.2m), ahead of Nine News (1.1m / 1.08m) and Hot Seat (634,000). Movie: Mad Max was 256,000.

Seven News was 999,000 / 929,000 for Seven then Home and Away (743,000), Criminal Minds (557,000 / 422,000) and Million Dollar Minute (545,000). House Rules ran in 3 cities with 410,000 (Sydney and Brisbane air tonight) and Border Security International was 255,000 in 2 cities.

MasterChef settled on 934,000 but remained the top non-News / Sport title. The Project was 627,000 / 481,000, TEN Eyewitness News was 615,000, Madam Secretary was 440,000 and Law and Order: SVU was 252,000. Hawaii Five 0 was 151,000.

ABC also had a quiet night with ABC News (745,000), 7:30 (601,000), The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (448,000), The Agony of Life (444,000), QI (443,000), Antiques Roadshow (332,000) and 8MMM (182,000).

On SBS ONE it was Neil Oliver: The Vikings (241,000), 24 Hours in Emergency (201,000), SBS World News (152,000), Food Safari (133,000) and The Legacy (80,000).

Big Bang was best on multichannels at 248,000.

Today: 317,000

Sunrise: 315,000

ABC News Breakfast: 99,000 / 52,000

OzTAM Overnights: Wednesday 27 May 2015

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