NRL Las Vegas: Peter V’landys’ gambit has stolen a march on the AFL
The NRL’s multimillion-dollar gamble on Las Vegas is hitting the jackpot … just not in the manner it thought it would.
At a packed sports bar at the end of the Las Vegas Strip on Wednesday, full of rugby league supporters carrying beer towers and chanting songs from the north of England, ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys was handed the keys to the city.
After having his name chanted by the crowd, Las Vegas Board of County Commissioners chair Tick Segerblom handed V’landys and NRL CEO Andrew Abdo an enormous silver key in a frame.
It was a ceremonial thank you to the NRL for holding season-opening matches at Allegiant Stadium as part of a five-year deal with the Nevada Tourism Commission.
I collared Mr Segerblom as he headed out a side door and asked what he thought of the NRL’s bold bid to convert fans to rugby league here in Las Vegas, the emerging sports franchise capital of the world.
“Football here is dying because of the head injuries,” he said, handing me his blue-and-gold embossed business card. “This (rugby league) is a classic football game without all the shit on it. It’s more attractive, more fun, the future, but it’ll take a few more years … It’s a no-brainer.”
Of course, rugby league has myriad issues with concussion, like all collision sports. And it has plenty of shit in it.
The NRL has some work to do before Americans not only know what it is – “like rugby, right?” – let alone understand it. In all probability, they’ll never know.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but I also reckon there’s little chance of the two-day player combine unearthing a future NRL player.
As for the new rivers of US wagering and broadcast gold – the whole reason the NRL is starting the season at Allegiant Stadium – it feels like a mirage for now.
Even the NRL’s pitch to US fans that rugby league is “football without helmet and pads” misses the mark because it diminishes the brutality of their football, whose league is the biggest in the world.
Yet none of this really matters. It doesn’t matter if American fans don’t suddenly fall in love with rugby league.
It doesn’t matter if the NRL gets a toenail in the exploding US wagering market. It doesn’t matter if Donald Trump or Tom Brady turn up for the quadruple-header on Sunday AEDT.
The NRL’s decision to launch its season in Vegas has been an extraordinary success, mostly because of what it does to the season. The biggest pay-off from the Vegas gamble is how it kicks the can down the road all season long.
The AFL will never admit it publicly, but others involved in the game were envious of the way the NRL “sucked the oxygen” out of the air at the start of their season.
It also made them react. Former AFL boss Gillon McLachlan was dismissive of rugby league during his tenure, but at least Andrew Dillon listened to interstate clubs and started the season in Sydney and Brisbane.
The NRL’s broadcast numbers for the season were enormous: it had 153.7 million viewers across streaming (64.5m) and linear (89.3m) from 213 matches.
The AFL had 140.3m across streaming (49.1m) and linear (91.1m). The all-in number across all NRL and AFL competitions was also telling: 186.8m viewers to the AFL’s 148.8m.
This is the part of the column when you have to excuse yourself for sounding like a cheerleader.
Reporters from other sports last year accused NRL journos of writing acres of sickening copy because the NRL had paid for flights or accommodation in Vegas. Some of the copy was over the top. Most of us said let’s see how it looks at the end of the five-year cycle. (For the record, the NRL last year covered flights and accommodation when I was working for another publication. This year, I paid for every expense.)
The NRL was bemused earlier this week with a Nine Newspapers story that pointed out NFL legend Rob Gronkowski, who was in Australia for a betting company, had lavished praise on the AFL in an interview despite being in the NRL’s Vegas campaign.
The report said Gronkowski had been hired “presumably at great expense”.
The NRL didn’t pay him. Fox Sports, his employer, did.
“Gronk is a fan of rugby league’s extraordinary physicality, and we’ve never had to pay him to say he enjoys our game,” Abdo said.
The question everyone keeps asking is … how much is this all costing and could it be better spent on grassroots or bush footy?
Abdo and V’landys insist last year’s cost was not $15m, as widely speculated, but closer to $3m. They forecast the event will break even this year. It’s a small spend for the most successful promotion in rugby league since Tina Turner set the game ablaze in the 1990s.
The Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix has run at a huge loss for years, including $100.6m in 2023 and $219.2m in 2024.
A few million is a round of drinks for the NRL with its booming revenue.
At the very least, everyone here seems to be having a lot of fun.
The roaring voices of Wigan and Warrington are heard everywhere you go. There are football jumpers of every hue. Elderly couples have spent their last cent to come. People are renewing their wedding vows.
And we’ve got the keys to the city.
Raiders ruckus
They don’t make rugby league atrocities like they used to, but thank God the game has broken its Vegas duck with Canberra players Hudson Young and Morgan Smithies having a fight in the team hotel with an inflatable baseball bat.
When the NRL announced in 2023 that it would be opening matches here for the next five seasons, the first thought wasn’t about the footy nor the event itself but, “What could possibly go wrong?”
And what could possibly go wrong if you plonked four rugby league teams in a neon metropolis full of sparkly casinos, strip clubs, nightclubs, and cannabis shops that look like Apple stores? The mind boggles.
In the end, no off-field atrocity involving a player was recorded. A match official was apparently blithering at the afterparty, while a player agent and his son traded drunken blows at some point, but that’s about it. Disappointing.
There were more than just two players involved in the Canberra incident, but it was a minor infraction. No charges, play on.
Maybe the Raiders should have followed the lead of Sharks captain Cameron McInnes, who was asked what he wanted to do while enjoying Vegas.
“To play the game on Sunday and then go home,” he said.
That’s the spirit.
Gronk cashes in
We don’t usually lower ourselves to cheap “spotteds” of well-known sporting types and their happenings – unless it’s a good one.
Spotted: the aforementioned Gronkowski hammering the poker machines alongside his father, Gordon, at Crown Casino in Melbourne.
He turned $500 into $3000 in no time, I’m told.
Marty v Matildas
For most people, the comments from Triple M’s Marty Sheargold about the Matildas demonstrate how far women’s sport has to go.
But doesn’t the widespread condemnation of his archaic remarks, then his departure from the network within a day, demonstrate how far it has come?
Sheargold had every right to say he didn’t like the Matildas, nor women’s sport, but the way he went on with it was ridiculous.
He was then universally torched, out the door within 24 hours.
If that doesn’t illustrate how far women’s sport has come, what does?
