NRL vs AFL: Who won TV ratings for the opening round?

The country’s two biggest football codes launched their 2024 seasons in extravagant fashion – the rugby league gambled in glitzy Vegas, while AFL embraced new territory with the first ever Sydney season opener.

Both codes enjoyed unorthodox opening rounds, with the NRL splitting theirs across two weeks and three continents. The two matches played in Vegas aired in Australia on a Sunday afternoon (March 3), and drew an average national audience of 796,000, with 1.69 million tuning in across Nine’s free-to-air broadcast and the digital stream.