The Newcastle Knights fairy-tale NRL season came to a heart-breaking end, after the Novacastrians lost to the Sydney Roosters 19-18. The thrilling match kept millions glued to their screens, achieving a national total TV reach of 6.053 million and a national total TV average audience of 4.286 million.
The grand final helped Nine notch up the second mast watched TV program of the year, falling agonisingly short of Seven’s AFL grand final coverage. Seven’s live, free and exclusive coverage between the Brisbane Lions and Fremantle took the crown with a national total TV audience of 4.52 million and an audience reach of 6.5 million.
In the NRL the underdog story of the Knights finishing the 2025 season dead-last to then making the grand final one year later helped Nine record its second highest watched NRL grand final of all time. The most watched grand final was recorded last year when Michael Maguire’s show stopping Brisbane Broncos encapsulated 6.4 million people and helped nine record a national total TV average audience of 4.5 million.
This edged out the 2025 AFL grand final which grabbed a reach of 6.4 million and an average audience of 4.18 million.
The match on Sunday night was a proper show stopping grand final, with the underdogs jumping out to a 12-point lead thanks to a run-away try from superstar fullback and captain Kalyn Ponga.
Unfortunately for most of Australia — who were rooting for the Knights — the lead didn’t last long with Roosters’ talented winger Mark Nawaqanitawase flipping the game on its head with a freakish try that energised his side to clinch an 18-12 lead with 20 minutes to play.
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With this lead it seemed as if the Roosters players were running downhill, zapping all energy out of the Knights. Somehow the Novacastrians, engulfed by the Newcastle spirit, managed to find a way to score a try in the last five minutes to tick the scoreboard over to 19-18.
A Daly-Cherry-Evans field goal was the only thing that separated these two sides. The Eastern suburbs victory saw the club notch its 16th premiership and fourth under mastermind coach Trent Robinson.
There were storylines all over the ground, but none bigger than the Roosters rolling the dice on a one-year contract for Cherry-Evans who proved to be the difference in the grand final. He leaves the NRL with two premierships under his belt—one in his first year with the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles and now one in his last year in the competition with the Roosters.
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In the NRL, the Roosters hold the bragging rights, but in the TV Ratings those sit with the AFL. Which made us think; how have the grand finals faired over the last five years?
As listed above, the NRL outperformed the AFL by the slimmest of margins in 2025. This was thanks to Reece Walsh who had a lot of Australia glued into the Broncos over last year’s NRL final series. But how do the previous three years fair?
In 2024 the AFL reigned victorious in total viewers with a total TV national average audience of 4.24 million and a reach of 6.09 million tuning in for the final match between Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions. The NRL final match-up between the Penrith Panthers and Melbourne Storm raked in a still impressive but the lower average audience of 3,422,000 and a reach of 3.65 million.
The 2023 NRL grand final between the Brisbane Broncos and the Penrith Panthers reached 4.6 million people and raked in an average audience of 2.916 million. The AFL beat the NRL with more people reached, but lost out on average audience figures. The Collingwood Magpies flag reached 4.98 million people and had an average audience of 2.74 million.
And in 2022, the NRL grand final gained an audience of 2.76 million domestic viewers, the smallest television viewership in the game’s history. The AFL posted much better figures with the grand final reaching 4.74 million people and scoring an audience of 3.06 million.
