NRL Finals Marketing: How Clubs Are Building Campaigns Around September
It’s (finally) National Rugby League finals time, and something feels a little different this year.
Last year I wrote about the scale of the finals campaigns landing across my feed. This year there is still some brilliant work, but a distinct finals campaign is not universal. The make-up of the 8 is different too - bringing a different mix of clubs, finals experience and approaches to September content.
An NRL club recently told me they hold back 20% of their annual content budget in case they make finals - a resource deliberately kept in reserve for a high-attention moment they may or may not reach.
The 2025 NRL Finals attracted 20.5m viewers across AU/NZ, up 31% YoY. Viewership among 16–39 year olds in the first 3 weeks was up 54%, while Grand Final week alone generated 182m social views, 5.2m engagements and 275k shares.
For a few weeks, the audience gets bigger, the emotional stakes rise, media coverage intensifies and commercial interest increases. Clubs suddenly have more people watching, and a much clearer reason for those people to care - providing its own communication window.
A finals campaign gives the moment a clear meaning: what does finals mean for this club, its supporters and the wider story around it this year?
The One NZ Warriors “No Retreat, No Surrender” is built around language fans already know, but the execution gives it more weight. The phrase moves through supporter signs and player strapping, making it feel shared between the team and fan base rather than simply a finals slogan. For a side that finished 2nd, the tone is less about celebrating qualification and more about the belief and expectation around what could come next 👀
The Dolphins NRL “Every First Led Here” takes a different approach. Their first ever finals appearance is the story, and having Felise Kaufusi narrate adds weight to that reflection. It looks back through the club’s games, crowds, setbacks and milestones, making qualification feel like the culmination of what has come before. “Firsts” also gives them a natural way to keep extending the story through finals.
The Newcastle Knights “Our Time” was breadcrumbed before finals week and now carries through video, photography, typography and merchandise. Even the piece centred on players’ breathing lets you feel the tension without needing to tell you finals are important. In a landscape where most clubs now have good access and production quality, the Knights are differentiating through creative direction and consistency (I have another post coming on them later this year)
What I like about these is that they know what this moment means and built the creative around that. Of course, that takes time, budget, people, production capability and internal buy-in. Not every club has all of that available, but with audience, engagement & commercial attention increasing during finals, you can see why some clubs plan and resource for it a year in advance.