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AFTER an unbelievable AFL Grand Final over the weekend, it has sparked the debate over why the league remains one of the biggest sporting competitions in Australia.
Not only did it break TV records with more than 6.5 million people reached across the nation, but it was also played as a day game, with 100,023 people in attendance at the MCG.
The Grand Final averaged more than 4.52 million viewers, making it the most-watched AFL Grand Final on record and the most-watched television program in Australia so far this year.
It seems as if there is only one major bit of competition for the league, with the NRL showcasing its biggest stage this Sunday night.
Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys has always been a huge advocate for the game, and believes the latest broadcast deal speaks to why rugby league is now a more valuable broadcast product.
The latest NRL deal is worth $5.3 billion over seven years from 2028, while the AFL’s deal, which started last year, was valued at $4.5 billion over seven years from 2025 to 2031.
That means the NRL’s new deal is worth roughly $800 million more overall, although the agreements cover different periods and broadcast arrangements.
V’landys has also claimed the NRL now has more viewers than the AFL in Australia, excluding State of Origin, after the league worked to significantly grow its audience over the past five years.
Google Trends search terms also compare the two leagues, showing the average interest out of 100 throughout the last five years.
The data shows direct trends, highlighting the difference between the off-season and during the season, where search interest clearly peaks.
It also shows the AFL holding a relatively more popular search term when comparing the two throughout most parts of the year since 2022.
The closest year within the last five years was 2025, but after a huge finals series for the AFL, the Australian-based sport has opened up a larger gap in search interest in 2026.
The Google Trends data also compares the search terms across the states and territories of Australia.
It is evident that the NRL dominates New South Wales, with 79 per cent search interest in the state compared to just 21 per cent for the AFL.
That continues in Queensland, before the gap slowly starts to close in the ACT, where the NRL still holds the greater share of search interest.
In the rest of the states, the AFL dominates the NRL in search interest, taking over a vast majority of the country.
The difference is also reflected in attendance, with the AFL drawing almost 7.8 million fans across the 2026 season, according to recent reporting, while the AFL’s Grand Final alone attracted more than 100,000 people to the MCG.
But with the NRL now holding the biggest sports broadcast deal in Australian history, and with both codes continuing to attract enormous television audiences, the battle for Australia’s sporting audience is far from over.
For now, the numbers show just how different the two codes’ audiences are across the country — and Google Trends provides another way of seeing where that interest is coming from.
