NRL clubs have been handed a big weapon to bludgeon co-owners News Ltd and the ARL with their demand for a doubling in their annual grants: TV audience figures for this year have eclipsed the AFL by 15 million, sending a clear message that the teams who put on the show deserve the same $1.25 billion broadcasters recently paid for AFL rights.

NRL cumulative TV audience numbers for the year, based on OzTAM data, were 128 million, compared with AFL's 113 million, a 2 million rise in both codes on the previous year's figures.

Snag … NRL clubs say their viewers helped the AFL to recruit Israel Folau.

Huge NRL viewing numbers in regional NSW and Queensland are the critical difference, both in terms of the size of the audience and its growth potential for pay TV.

Regional free-to-air figures for the NRL the past two years were 38 million. The AFL's were 23 million this year, in areas where it has no teams in major centres of the size of population of the size of Newcastle, Wollongong and Townsville.