The Kangaroo Tour might be a thing of the past, but what we have instead is smashing holes in the adage that fewer and fewer people are interested in the international side of the game.

The upcoming 2016 Rugby League Four Nations tournament in Britain will be held on the back of last weekend’s outrageously successful Australia vs New Zealand Test match. Held at nib Stadium in Perth, the fixture was the first league Test ever to be played in “non-league” Western Australia. According to media industry journal Mediaweek, 853,000 television viewers watched the 20,283 sold-out match, an out-of-season game played on the door step of the summer cricket months.

But the strong interest in international league of late isn’t just about Australia and New Zealand. During the NRL’s Representative Round back in May, 15,225 flocked to Parramatta Stadium for a Pacific double-header which pitted Samoa up against Tonga, while Fiji took on Papua New Guinea. Fox Sports would have been doing cartwheels over the 275,000 viewers who tuned in at home.

Back in 2014, Australia and New Zealand hosted that year’s Four Nations event, which attracted spectacular at-home viewer numbers and crowd support. The tournament opened with a double header: England played Samoa and Australia took on New Zealand. A roll-up of 47,813 was on hand on a very un-rugby-league October Saturday night in Brisbane. (Months before, in the lead-up to the tournament, Samoa defeated Fiji in a qualifier for the fourth and final spot. This game was played in front of 9063 fans at Penrith.)

The 2014 Four Nations Final, played between Australia and New Zealand and won 22-18 by the Kiwis, attracted a crowd of 25,093 at Westpac Stadium in Wellington. After the match, Mediaweek announced an Australian TV audience of almost 800K – 606,000 viewers on Channel Nine and 175K on Gem. Other impressive crowd turnouts for the tournament included 20,585 at Melbourne for the Australia-England fixture and 18,456 at Wollongong for Australia versus Samoa.

And if interest in the 2013 Rugby League World Cup was anything to go by, the event next year in Australia should be well and truly generating excitement through the hallways of the International Rugby League Federation. The ‘13 Cup, held in the northern hemisphere, attracted a total crowd of 458,463, including an international-record-attendance of 74,468 for the final at Old Trafford. The previous weekend, 67,545 rolled-in to Wembley in London for a semi-final double-header featuring England taking on the Kiwis and Australia up against Fiji.

Across the 2013 tournament, there were eight sell-outs and eight stadium record crowds. Following the event, organisers reported a profit of more than $6.65m.

The 2016 Four Nations tournament will kick-off at 6am (Sydney time) on October 29, with Australia facing Euro qualifiers Scotland at Hull. The Four Nations final, meanwhile, will be played at Anfield, Liverpool (Monday, November 21, 1.30am AEDT).