Which club really gets the NRL's best home crowds?

Have a look at the newspapers online. Consider the Daily Telegraph in Sydney and the Herald-Sun in Melbourne (same paper different cities) with their phone apps. Go to the sport section 5th April, not the AFL or NRL. 3 articles on AFL and 2 NRL under sport from the Herald-Sun (Melb). 13 articles on NRL and 1 AFL under sport from the Daily Telegraph (Syd) and you consider the blanket coverage of Melbourne greater than Sydney? Unless the news contains Sydney, you don't hear about it. I grew up in Victoria and heard about/saw on TV the League in the news - even before Storm entered the NRL. I now live in Sydney and it is NRL this, NRL that. Can't remember the last AFL story on the evening news. As for Melbournians/Victorians supporting any sport - why are the biggest origin crowds in Melbourne? Why do the Storm get larger crowds than most Sydney teams? Going by what you say - that shouldn't happen.

I find this hard to believe, what sort of media is it that is saturated with the NRL more than Melbourne and Aussie Rules? I've heard the opposite views and I grew up in Sydney and there was plenty of AF news but mainly from Melbourne. I lived in Adelaide in 77/78 and as well as the local SANFL there was plenty of VFL and close to zero Sydney Rugby League. Your last sentence is also hard to believe. In 1980, while working in Canberra, I tried to sell some rugby league raffle tickets at work to a Victorian woman and she burst into tears because it wasn't real footy. But when you said Sydney people struggle to imagine anything outside of Sydney I realised you were only joking.

As shown when the NRL tried to kick Souths out there are many dormant fans in Sydney although there were probably plenty of other clubs walking too. St-George have many fans scattered all over NSW and Qld and like Souths they don't turn up when they're losing although they still watch them on TV.

Lived 40 years in Sydney, last 20 in Melbourne. To say Victorians have no life is laughable. What exactly can you do in Sydney that is not on offer here? Melbourne is the cultural capital of Australia for a start. "Comments around the workplace" ?? !! I'm sure the NRL is raking in the money from that. Meanwhile a 50,000 crowd at an AFL game (a regular occurence) conservatively pulls in over $1,000,000 dollars in revenue just on ticket sales.

Ken W, I've lived in Melbourne and Sydney and Sydney is much more insolated and heavier in media saturation with the NRL than Melbourne with AFL. Storm regularly feature in the papers and on the news in Melbourne, not so with Sydney and the Swans or Giants. Mainly it is because Melbournians support of any sport, unlike Sydney people who struggle to imagine anything outside of Sydney

Randy, the last 3 you mentioned are real problem if you don't have a car. Going to Penrith is a long train trip and a decent walk to the stadium. Going to Brookvale could include train , ferry and bus and when you get there not a lot of seating, so they are not good experiences. Sharks are shutdown for a couple of years so no problems. I do like the AFL set up as all the Melbourne clubs bar Geelong are all playing out of MCG to and Marvel so no real problems there. It's the physche and passion of the Melbourne fans that leaves NRL for dead.

If and when they go down the road of Thursday nights and 6 pm Fridays they will continue to go backwards. I think they should play some double headers particularly on Sydney on either Saturday night an Sundays to cut down on ground hires Cut the 5:30 pm match out until they get back on their feet . Particularly at ANZ and Bankwest.

AFL is a game best watched live as there is heaps of movement and activity off the ball. NRL is made for TV with the action quite localized and the collisions and sleight of hand are best from close range.

So watching them on TV is not supporting your team?

NRL is a TV game essentially Tim. With AFL you miss so much on TV, but with the NRL the action is fairly localized so TV works. That's why the TV ratings are comparable or better than AFL, but the crowds are not.

Brisbane gets 15,000 to games each round, but to be fair for every second round there is no game to go to, so ... Also every game on Friday night and live free to air probably makes a difference.

While leaving the SCG through the Paddington exit back in 1972/3 after Easts beat Saints my friends were sledging Easts fans about the overrated Mark Harris. One Easts fan replied with “Eat your heart out. Enjoy your trip back to Rockdale” causing much laughter but my friends were heading home to their parent’s house in Strathfield to play snooker on their full-size snooker table. I lived in Hurstville in the centre of the St-George shire where I could walk through Rockdale, cross the railway line and walk down to Kogarah Oval and join the queue.

When did I mention pride in that number? That number could be much better, and 2019 was not a great year for Sydney with potentially bigger drawers like Wests, Dogs, Dragons & Panthers being off the pace. I was only pointing out that the author's contention that Sydney was dragging the chain compared to the other capital's wasn't supported by the evidence. I also think you're wrong about media saturation, having spent considerable time in Brisbane and Melbourne both have them have far heavier media saturation for their respective popular codes (especially Melbourne with the AFL).

Micko, most of those suburban NRL grounds are far more accessible than More Park however if we go back before they (whoever they were) decided that we should sell the game to the media & schedule games to suit peak viewing and not worry about attracting the crowds, those old grounds were always pretty full right up until the late 1980's by the mid 90's the super league war was all about media rights etc and the game has never been the same since.

it also comes back to the geography of Sydney vs Melbourne. Sydney is not as centralised as Melbourne, it has several smaller suburban city centres. Its main CBD is far over to the east of its metropolitan area. Melbourne CBD is more central and the AFL teams are all inner suburbs surrounding the CBD. The Sydney NRL teams are spread out all over Sydney with Penrith being 50km from Sydney CBD. The centralized stadium model will work for some teams - Eels, Rabbitohs, Roosters, maybe Tigers and Bulldogs but not sure it would work for Panthers, Sharks and Sea Eagles.

there are no games at friday 7pm

yet they can seat, what 50,000 for SOO and they had well over 30,000 for the Magic Round for each of the days from memory. I’m suggesting the average crowd numbers quoted in this piece, mean the capacity is well over 30,000 for the NRL

Suncorp is capped at 30,000 for most events (used to be 25,000) and only a limited number of events per year i think 20 are allowed to go over that but that is for all event's at the stadium

Maybe you need to go to Specsavers mate.....the drone shot shows almost 2/3s capacity. So yeah approximately 10,000 is correct.

Well there's two clear philosophies: AFL teams are usually in central major stadiums with good transport links. The Sydney NRL teams are still vastly spread out in suburban stadiums that are likely difficult to access. The NRL (to follow the AFL model) would have to try to force everyone to play out of a handful of stadiums like the rebuilt SFS, Bankwest Stadium, Kogarah etc. Apparently the local council in Liverpool (southwest Sydney) wanted to build a 30,000 stadium for Canterbury Bulldogs, Wests Tigers, A League etc, but it obviously never went ahead. Sydney people apparently like the suburban model, but Parramatta are obviously seeing a surge at Bankwest Stadium, and presumably Wests Tigers and Canterbury have seen healthy crowds at Bankwest Stadium too, so maybe that's the start of the process. Even rebuilt, will an oversized cavernous rectangle Homebush be popular? I'm not sure.