The people that bought tickets to the Olympics are sports fans, event goers, and generally people wanting to witness one of the top sporting events in the world. You can attend the NRL every year; the Olympics doesn't come around very often, especially on these shores. You shouldn't really compare them to crowds in at club level.
I don't think attendances have anything to do with lack of hype. To use your example of the EPL, most of the games have an outright favourite particpating. Over the course of 380 odd games, maybe 20-30 will be genuine contests. Yet most clubs sell out stadiums on a regular basis. Why? Not because of any hype factor, rather attending is entrenched in the culture. And thats what needs to happen in the NRL. Membership drives a good start, but as I said earlier, its very naive to expect to see that culture of non-attendance change overnight. Could take a good 10+ years, but I suspect we'll still be talking about crowds up until that culture has changed.
