Nope - not national.
It's not national when there's f**k all interest in the sport in half the country - as evidenced by these numbers above, and the same results week in week out for the last 40 years.
Just because you stick a couple teams in Sydney and Brisbane doesn't make you a national comp. It's not supported in any numbers.
To have a national competition you actually need some interest nationally - not 30k viewers for your back to back premiership winning Brisbane team in it's home state.
You can't even use the 'but the crowd was big' excuse because it wasnt a home game - where are all the fans?? Do they not care enough to watch their team? Don't the Lions have like 100k members?
But you miss the point that media revenue isn't the only thing that matters.
The AFL might get 30k TV viewers in Brisbane, to Brisbane Lions games. But say they got 100k instead. What benefit is that to the AFL? They might be able to sell media rights for a few million more a year.
But Brisbane Lions get 300,000 attendees to their home games a year. 10 years ago, when they were bad, they were only getting 200,000 a year. The benefit of that 100,000, via memberships and ticket purchases (and more minor things like merchandising) is worth a lot. If we use a rule of thumb that they benefit $30 from each additional attendee, that's another $3 million.
What does the AFL spend this additional 3 million on? Subsidising Auskick in Queensland. It is cheaper to do Auskick if you live in Brisbane or Gold Coast than mod league. Which is why AFL don't just care about how many people in Brisbane watch a Brisbane Lions game on TV, they care about participation numbers.
Now, the AFL are not doing this out of their goodness of their heart because they love the idea of little Johnnie running around kicking a sherrin over a steeden. They would hope that, in 20 years' time, as little Johnnie becomes big Johnnie and he moves to Sydney to become a bigwig at a bank and is too busy to care about sport, NRL or AFL otherwise, he holds a more positive view of the AFL having played it as a tacker, and therefore will convince his bank to sponsor the AFL instead of the NRL.
There's more to the AFL and NRL strategies than discussed here. It's complex.