Hypothesis: The majority of Rugby League fans who support teams which may not meet the NRL’s criteria for inclusion in a 14 team competition in 2000, will remain Rugby League supporters opposed to joining the growing army of AFL fans or other fast growing sports.

Conclusion: It can be concluded from the Internet survey results that the majority of fans who support teams which may not meet the NRL’s criteria for inclusion in a 14 team competition in 2000 will still follow the game. AFL is not as popular with the survey respondents as it was thought to be. However it appears that those fans who support teams which are likely to meet the criteria e.g. Brisbane are far more likely to still follow the game, in many cases because they know their team will definitely stand alone. All these graphs show that more people are likely to still follow the game than those who are not. However the length of time for which a fan has followed greatly increases his/her likelihood to lose interest if their team does not survive.

The results are not as conclusive as they might have been had I been able to use another source of investigation e.g.: surveys conducted at games. I was not able to compare the views of the older population with the younger population due to the fact that younger people mainly access the Internet. But keeping in mind that the future of the game is very important in this topic, perhaps young supporters views are more relevant as this is the game that they’ll be supporting for a very long time.