Raiderdave wrote:Xman wrote:King-Eliagh wrote:Well I think you're overestimating a little there Xman.
RL CROWDS are lower than AFL crowds. But that's been established and agreed upon by every member of this forum. So why you AFL folks bother bring it up is beyond me and requires serious clinical assessment.
This thread is about international footy. And if you folks cant see the truth in parraeels pictures and descriptions and admit you got a looooooooong way to go, in fact further than the NRL has to go in terms of crowds, to catchup to international RL. And if you folk cant admit that, then clinical assessment wont help, shock therapy might, but prob wont either.
Thoughts cos amd xman?
My comment is totally relevant!
International could also be termed world-wide.
And worldwide AFL is bigger than all RL leagues put together.
NFL is probably not played in as many countries as RU. BUT NFL is clearly the bigger sport world-wide.
its not even bigger then RL in the only country its played in
RL .. 136 Million sets of eyes watching in 2011
AFL... 128 Million
worldwide
AFL another .... I dunno ... 500
RL
Eng .. another 60 Million
NZ .. another 30 Million
PNG .. another 30 Million
worldwide
RL ova a quarter of a billion watchers in 2011
AFL 128 Million .. & 500
thems the facts

You're making the classic RL fans mistake of assuming TV audience is the only indicator of a codes size and popularity.
Of course TV ratings vary enormously depending on when the games are scheduled, how they are scheduled (live or delayed), and how often they are scheduled (longer season or shorter seasons).
RL have a longer season, live prime time schedules and up to 7 games viewable per week. To date the AFL have had shorter seasons, few live games and only 4-5 viewable games per week. All things considered the NRL should decimate the AFL in the 5city ratings, but they actually lose and by a fair margin. They need to add dubious regional figures to win meaningless cumulative ratings.
Yet if popularity and size are to be truly evaluated correctly the TV ratings are only one of a number of key indicators that should be used. Revenue, media interest, memberships and crowds are all as or even more important.
Therefore, even if the NRL claimed a dubious TV ratings advantage over the AFL the latter absolutely smashes the NRL in every other quantifiable measure by double the amount or more!
Further, the NRL is clearly the worlds largest RL competition, with only minor or amature leagues located in a limited number of other countries. Therefore, even if the key indicators for all the worlds RL competitions were combined the AFLs enormous advantage in every area bar the TV ratings would see it easily claim to be the larger code on a world wide scale.