Football fans are seeing more football than ever before. And it’s never been more unpredictable.

As the finals approach, the NRL is celebrating the end of a regular season in which there has been an average of 56 minutes of ball in play. That’s the highest figure on record – more than a minute increase on last season.

By way of comparison, during the 2023 Rugby World Cup, the average ball-in-play time across 80 minutes was just 34 minutes.

The increase in actual play time was just one of the key stats to emerge after the NRL crunched the numbers from the 197 games played to date in 2025. There has been a trend towards closer, higher-scoring games during a season in which several big leads have been run down.

Seventy games were decided by a margin of 0-6 points – the most since 2018. No

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