In 2023, NRL team Melbourne Storm was the most supported team in Australia's National Rugby League, with close to 1.2 million supporters in the country.
www.statista.com
Most popular National Rugby League (NRL) teams in Australia in 2023, by number of supporters(in 1,000s)
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The above report is based upon Roy Morgan's Single Source survey. This survey purely asks, out of the 17 NRL teams, who do you support, they use pretty much the same audience as they do for their AFL survey, which is why you end up with the Storm as number 1 for NRL and the Swans as number 1 for AFL.
NRL results:
AFL results:
The reality is, whilst these expansion teams have a lot of 'casual' supporters, they aren't the same type of supporters that
@titoelcolombiano and co are talking about.
The metrics they are looking at are:
- Home attendance
- TV audiences
The Bulldogs had the highest Sydney average attendance in 2024 and has had more 20K+ average attendances than any other team since 2000. If they're not the biggest, they are definitely ones of them.
From a TV audiences perspective, the top drawing Sydney teams on both FTA and STV are Souths, Eels, Roosters, Bulldogs and Wests over the past decade.