The NRL’s successful launch in the US has not gone unnoticed by the AFL, as it spruiked their ambitious billion-dollar plan to have football on in every home around the country within the next 10 years.

Rugby league’s Las Vegas experiment was the subject of many conversations among AFL and club bosses at the league’s commission meeting in Sydney on Wednesday, according to two sources present who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly.

The sources said there was widespread acknowledgment the NRL had done a good job and gained traction with last week’s games in Sin City.

Former AFL chief Gillon McLachlan made a concerted effort to never mention Peter V’landys’ name as part of his approach to handling the ARL Commission chairman, but there is much respect for the Sydney administrator among football circles, where he is regarded by many senior figures as being a formidable opponent.

The shift comes amid an intensifying of the code wars between the country’s two biggest football competitions. While the NRL has embarked on a quest to crack the US market, the AFL is making a renewed bid to win over new fans in rugby league heartland.

The AFL’s billion-dollar push comes after frustrated Sydney club bosses last year pleaded with the league to step up their efforts in NSW, saying the game was going backwards in the state, while Giants chief David Matthews claimed the NRL had become stronger since his club’s inception in 2012.

The AFL has taken the unprecedented step of kicking off its season exclusively in the northern states with all four clubs from Sydney and Queensland involved in blockbuster clashes against Victorian giants.

AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder said the AFL had “put our money where our mouth is” by investing $1 billion nationally at grassroots level as it seeks to double participation numbers to more than a million by 2033.