AUSTRALIANS have watched the Western Bulldogs' drought-breaking premiership victory in phenomenal numbers.

Channel Seven's Grand Final coverage reached more than 6.5 million combined in-home viewers across the day-long telecast.

The siren-to-siren telecast peaked at 5.160 million viewers, which was the highest metropolitan audience for a Grand Final since 2006.

In Sydney alone the audience peaked at 705,000.

According to OzTam ratings, 91.2 per cent of people who had their televisions on were tuned into the game.

The preliminary figures don't include viewers on Telstra's AFL Live Official App, those watching overseas via Watch AFL and fans in pubs and bars across the nation. 

The fanfare surrounding the Bulldogs emotional victory has prompted Seven to schedule a replay of the game at 3.30pm on Sunday in Melbourne, and an afternoon encore screening of the classic documentary Year of the Dogs. 

 The Western Bulldogs' victory in the 2016 Toyota AFL Grand Final over the Sydney Swans was the fourth most-watched game in VFL/AFL history.

The Dogs' 22-point victory saw a combined metro and regional average of 4.089 million viewers on the Seven Network, up 16 per cent on last year's Hawthorn v West Coast decider.

This placed the match behind only the 1996 (4.4 million, NMelb v Sydney); 2005 (4.4 million, Sydney v West Coast) and 2006 (4.15 million, West Coast v Sydney) Grand Finals.