PETER V’LANDYS and Andrew Abdo, the chairman and CEO of the NRL, were celebrating at the weekend after the successful and historic staging of the opening two games of the NRL season at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
It was the first time an NRL game had been played outside Australia and New Zealand and, despite extreme weather conditions in Las Vegas on Saturday, which saw gusts of wind of 111km/hr reported nearby, the game drew an official attendance of 40,746.
Manly defeated South Sydney 36-24 before Sydney Roosters beat Brisbane 20-10, with the stadium being enclosed and the temperature set at a steady 21 degrees, although the weather forced the NRL to cancel a tailgate party that was set to take place in a parking lot.
One unexpected drawback for the NRL involved the broadcast of the game, which was scheduled for Fox Sports 1, but which began on Fox Sports 2 because a college basketball game had run into overtime. The main channel only joined the action about 18 minutes in.
One blot on the weekend was the accusation of a racial slur allegedly made by Sydney Roosters’ Samoan forward Spencer Leniu against Brisbane’s Indigenous stand-off Ezra Mam in the 69th minute of the second game.
Referee Adam Gee halted the game and placed Leniu on report following the formal complaint from Mam, with the allegation being that he had called Mam a monkey.
“Ezra has made a formal complaint,” Gee said to the Roosters after the incident.
“It’s racial in nature against Spencer. I haven’t heard it. The incident goes on report and it will be dealt with after. That’s where it’s at.”
Leniu was asked about the incident in a post-match interview with Triple M radio station and said that he believed the matter would not be taken any further.
Apart from that incident, Abdo and V’landys were delighted with the way the weekend had unfolded, as they confirmed speaking afterwards to Fox Sports’ Matthew Johns.
“Amazing, so many months in the planning and then to see it all brought to life,” said Abdo.
“The players had a great time, but more importantly the fans had a great time. Peter’s vision was for growth coming out of Covid, thinking about how we could make the game stronger and more sustainable, taking us to new markets. We got 40,000 this year and we want 50,000 next year.”
V’landys admitted that Las Vegas hadn’t originally been his first choice for taking the NRL to America.
“We were originally looking at Los Angeles, but we spoke to a senior executive at Fox who told us not to do it, saying we would get lost in LA and it would be a failure,” he said.
“That made us go back to the drawing board and we looked at a few venues. You need a good team behind you. Andrew and his team have done a magnificent job. I don’t know how they put up with me but you’ve seen the result for yourself. And we are coming back.
“We’ve now built the foundation and we’re going to improve next year, but the results have to be coming through with American viewers, so we want to see how many viewers we got and how many subscriptions to Watch NRL.
“It’s going to take three or four years, but I am now more confident than ever that we can make tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars that will go back into the grassroots.”
One interested spectator from England was Rhodri Jones, the managing director of RL Commercial, who was impressed by what he saw.
“There was obvious relevance to RL Commercial in the NRL’s Las Vegas promotion, and it also presented an opportunity to catch up with NRL officials to develop our collaborative relationship,” Jones told League Express.
“It’s been a highly successful weekend, in terms of the global profile of Rugby League – and we congratulate the NRL for that.”
