And if you look at the Sports section of the Sydney Morning Herald, AFL is relegated to a distant 5th place on the page - behind NRL, World Cup, Rugby Union, and Cricket. Same for the Brisbane Times version of the online paper.
The Sydney one has some NRL articles in the top-most featured...
And the population of those states (combined) only makes up a "4th" big state, and at the low end of the scale even then:
NSW - 7.9 mill (and let's include ACT here, so actually over 8.2 mill)
Vic - 6.3 mill
QLD - 4.9 mill
Other - 5.1 million
Total population where Rugby is "dominant": 13.2...
Unless a lot has changed in the last 10 years that's only true in Victoria. NSW and QLD go more Rugby League and (to a lesser extent) Union, ahead of the AFL. There's a good reason why the majority of the teams are Vic teams in the AFL.
Victoria 10 teams. And then 2 each in NSW, QLD, SA, and...