Barassi Line

The Barassi Line is an imaginary line in Australia which approximately divides areas where Australian rules football or rugby league is the most popular football code. The term was first used by historian Ian Turner in his 1978 Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture. Crowd figures, media coverage, and participation rates are heavily skewed in favour of the dominant code on both sides.

Roughly speaking, the line follows Queensland's western border, drops southeast through western New South Wales, and ends at the Pacific Ocean at Cape Howe on the border of New South Wales and Victoria. It divides New South Wales, placing the Riverina area of southern New South Wales and the western mining city of Broken Hill on the Australian rules football side, and the rest on the rugby side. It runs through the Australian Capital Territory, where each sport has had similar prominence at different times throughout history – although the rugby codes have established greater prominence there in the decades since it was first proposed.

Non-football sports in Australia do not share this separation; for instance, cricket has been played on a national scale by state representative teams for more than 100 years.