In Queensland, Rugby league was introduced in 1908 and is the most watched winter sport in the state and the second most participated football code after soccer.

[2] In the 1920s, Queenslanders began leaving to play professionally in the New South Wales Rugby League which became a more popular competition.

The Broncos, the oldest and most popular in the state, records the highest annual revenue of all NRL clubs.

[3] Along with financial competitiveness, the Broncos have been voted one of Australia's most popular and most watched football teams,[4] and has one of the highest average attendances of any rugby league club in the world; 33,337 in the 2012 NRL season.

Queensland origin legends include: Wally Lewis, Darren Lockyer, Mal Meninga, Allan Langer, Johnathan Thurston, Arthur Beetson, Shane Webcke, Gorden Tallis, Wendell Sailor, Greg Inglis, Bob Lindner, Trevor Gillmeister, Cameron Smith, Billy Slater, Cooper Cronk, Paul Vautin, Lote Tuquiri, and Petero Civoniceva.

The new organisation was attacked by the local press and the QRU for introducing professionalism, which they claimed would destroy the sport.

In 1922 the Brisbane Rugby Football League (BRFL, later BRL) was formed out of dissatisfaction with the way the QRL ran the game.

Clubs found themselves in financial hardship, and the public began to support the Sydney competition which by then was being broadcast in Queensland.

However, a small resurgence in the popularity of the Brisbane competition occurred after Queensland dominated the Interstate Series under new State of Origin rules.

This changed when, in 1988, the newly formed Brisbane Broncos and the Gold Coast-Tweed Giants joined the New South Wales Rugby League premiership.

This led to the Brisbane Rugby League premiership being considered by most senior rugby league historians to have become a second-tier league in this year, as almost all of the top players in the competition left to play for either of the two new Queensland franchises in the NSWRL, including Wally Lewis, Gene Miles, Colin Scott, Joe Kilroy, Bryan Niebling, Greg Conescu, and Greg Dowling who all joined the QRL's original bid, the Brisbane Broncos.

Both competitions eventually merged with each other into the statewide Queensland Cup in 1996, and after existing as a short post-season tournament to find a Brisbane champion in 1996 and 1997, the BRL was officially disbanded after 75 seasons in 1997.

As of 2021, there is great speculation that a second Brisbane team to finally replace the Crushers franchise of the 1990s will be added in the next few seasons.

During the 1980s Queensland had the upper hand (8 out of 10 to Qld); during the 1990s, factoring in Super League which took out most of the Queensland team (through the Brisbane Broncos), the results were reasonably similar (6 out of 10 to NSW); and during the first decade of the 2000s, New South Wales has had the upper hand, but are by no means dominant (4 out of 7 to NSW, with the most recent to Qld).