To really put things in perspective for our NRL friends, the AFL has more than double the amount of news stories in the media when compared to the NRL. Double I tell ya. The joys of a truly national competition shown below. :P
Sports by weeks in list and total number of stories.
Sport / Weeks / Total number of stories
Sport weeks Total number of stories
AFL / 26 / 322812
Cricket / 20 / 179526
NRL / 19.5 / 166348
Golf / 5 / 27,092
Tennis / 5 / 59096
Rugby / 4.5 / 27613
Horses / 4 / 51625
Others / 7 / 68908
Table 4 and Figure 2 (above) show the dominance of AFL in sports coverage in the nation’s media. It appeared in the “top 5” list for 26 of the 44 weeks, with a total number of mentions in excess of 322,000 – more than a third of sport’s 900,000-plus total. Cricket comes in second with mentions in 20 weeks (almost half) of the survey period, but with a total number of stories not much more than half that of the AFL.
Rugby league is the third most popular sport with the nation’s media, understandable since it is limited to the eastern mainland states.
http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/vi ... entions%22