Why Australian Kangaroos may be ranked the No.2 rugby league nation for a long time

Fairfax ran a piece yesterday on Rugby league which also referred to tv ratings from the game, and compared them to the AFLs ANZAC Day game between Collingwood and Essendon.

The Test in Brisbane on Sunday was watched by the biggest capital city audience for any football code this year, with 939,000 viewers tuning into the coverage on Nine and Gem, comprising of 541,000 in Sydney, 319,000 in Brisbane, 60,000 in Melbourne and 19,000 in Perth.

In comparison, the Collingwood-Essendon AFL match on Anzac Day was watched by 758 691 viewers in the five capital cities, while the biggest NRL audiences were for the Rabbitohs-Broncos (729,000) and Roosters-Broncos (691,000).

In addition to the Australian television audience for Sunday’s Test, there were another 272,000 viewers watching in New Zealand on Sky Sports and 34,000 who tuned into the free-to-air replay on Maori TV.