‘Unassailable’: Why rugby league has left the AFL in its dust

Now that the NRL appears to have finally learned how to handle money, there is no longer any doubt about football’s best code.

NRL officially better than AFL

COMMENT

While everybody is sick of the rampant egocentrism of the Code Wars, it’s true rugby league has always been better than Aussie Rules.

But with the NRL’s announcement this week of record profits for 2023, it appears the AFL’s task of overhauling Australia’s No. 1 sport is now unassailable.

The only place to watch both games of the Las Vegas opening double-header live is Fox League, available on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial today >

Dripping in proverbial Cristal as he delivered the news on Wednesday, ARLC chairman Peter V’landys smugly rolled off a raft of fiscal PB’s for The Greatest Game of All like a feline smoking a slim cigarette.

This included record revenue of $700m, colossal upticks in distributions for clubs and grassroots, and the yearly staple of braining its rivals in TV ratings.

But while the game’s record profit of $58.2m is small fry to a mint like the AFL – an amount they racked up in scarves by the time the chairman finished his triumphant presser – the alarm bells for the Victorian code lie deeper in the detail.

The AFL simply can’t match … whatever this is. Photo: NRL Images.

It’s not the NRL’s record revenue that should cause concern, nor its booming numbers of eyeballs or the utter shock of Aaron Woods fronting NFL coverage.

It’s the chilling realisation that rugby league has finally begun respecting its own wallet for the first time in 116 years.

Put simply, the AFL should be quivering knowing its rival has somehow snapped at its heels for over a century despite barely having two coins to rub together.

Considering the NRL’s mortgage on ratings and its dwarfing footprint internationally, it’s only a matter of time before the 13-man code is out of sight now it’s no longer blurting away its meagre savings like Lloyd Christmas.

With rugby league awake to the advantages of stuff like savings and assets, its previous fiscal model of surviving off pokies and fining Ricky Stuart is now a distant memory.

Anthony Albanese, Peter V’landys and US President Joe Biden.

For those unfamiliar, rugby league has a history of largely lurching from one Mariana Trench to the next, with its cultural neglect of coin so reckless it was only eight weeks shy of insolvency during Covid.

Yet despite a lifetime as a hot mess run on feelings and bounced cheques, somehow it still punched admirably against the Kremlin finances of the Putin-esque AFL.

But now the goalposts have been shifted.

The game is boasting a net asset base of $260m and it’s not ephemeral stuff like TV money and the Daly Cherry Evans deal.

Better still, it’s finally banking some of its TV money rather than blowing it up the wall on Bunkers and Waratahs.

NRL is officially better than the AFL. Photos: News Corp and Getty Images

Yep, after the irresponsible spending of the Super League War, the David Smith hire car era and the herniated running costs of the Todd Greenberg administration, rugby league has awoken as a wealthy powerhouse.

It’s thanks to the wizardry of V’Landys and Andrew Abdo, two men who can stretch numbers to such proportions that the Bears earned 200,000 members and Dylan Edwards 191 assists.

Nevertheless, it’s not completely fatal for the AFL.

In fact, it doesn’t need to fold yet, not at least until the end of the season anyway.

Despite the NRL’s brash growth, Aussie Rules remains top dog in critical metrics like crowds, national footprint and illegal au pairs, and still enjoys a cult-like membership that would make the Vatican envious.

Don’t forget the NRL is also suffering with the skeletonised state of bush footy and, despite the record injection of revenue, concerning numbers of kids down the eastern seaboard drowning in Auskick footies.

But it’s a rolling s**tshow for rugby league no different to the last 116 years and it’s a resilience no amount of celebs photographed with Sherrins can overcome.

Add the NRL no longer Afterpaying its credit card bill and it spells doom for the nation’s second-best code.

With an exciting new revenue stream being mined in the US gambling market and the promise of taxpayer funding budding from government paranoia towards China, rugby league and its tremendous purse now sits untouchable atop its throne – at least until they blow it all on the Craps table in Vegas.

Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.