Formed on April 25th, 1910 NZRL leads the growth, development and delivery of rugby league in Aotearoa.
Seven Zones, comprising 16 districts, govern and service our grassroots game: Northland, Akarana, Counties Manukau, Upper Central, Mid Central, Wellington and Southland.
These Zones compete at a national level through the NZRL Premiership, while NZRL manages the New Zealand international representative teams:
Alongside its professional representative teams, NZRL also manages the NZ 16s representatives, NZ 18s representatives, and the NZ Residents.
We deliver a series of annual tournaments including the award-winning National Secondary Schools tournament, the National Championship and Youth tournaments and the National Premiership and Sky Sport Women’s Premiership.
Rugby league in Aotearoa continues to go from strength to strength. In 2023, rangatahi participation increased by 28 per cent, with an additional 16 teams competing in our national secondary schools’ tournament, and five new teams entering the National Youth competition.
The game welcomed a 35 per cent increase in female participation, indicating that our growing domestic tournaments, competitions, and representative opportunities are encouraging female involvement in the game.
Overall, participation numbers were up 22 per cent, surpassing pre-COVID numbers.
In 2024, 38,000 Kiwis registered to play our game.
Volunteer numbers increased by 13 per cent, with another 301 dedicated Kiwi giving up their time to contribute to our sport, taking the total volunteer base to over 2,000.
Surging interest in the game has seen our number of followers across all social media platforms climb to over 792,000, while the 2023 Pacific Championship attracted a TV audience of 3.8 million across Aotearoa and Australia and drove nearly 9 million social media engagements.
