OPINION | Rugbah League set to lose in Vegas

OPINION | Rugbah League set to lose in Vegas

GuyWhoLikesSport

Do you remember the scene in Swingers where Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn are driving to Vegas?

At the start of the trip, they’re excitedly screaming “Vegas Baby, Vegas.”

They have this grand plan of betting lavishly with $100 under the impression that the pit boss will see them and comp them with all sorts of stuff.

Favreau even says “if you walk in and look like you gamble a lot they give you free shit.”

They’re assuming that they’ll just walk in wearing suits, and start betting, they will be perceived as whales that the casino will want to treat well to ensure they come back.

Chances are they’ll get the Rain Man suite, that’s how impressive they’ll be.

Do you see how delusional those two are?

Betting $100 in Vegas is supposed to impress a pit boss?

Wearing a suit will get you free shit?

It has absolutely zero relationship with reality, a bit like how I see the NRL’s plan to take over Sin City.

Assuming you’re going to walk in, take Las Vegas – the global home of entertainment – by storm because of how astonishing your product is, to eventually pave the way for “NRL America” is delusional.

Seriously, if you can’t get people from Adelaide to care about rugby league how are you going to get Americans?

NRL 2023: Why Adelaide must be part of expansion plans as NRL eyes 18th team | Daily Telegraph

You know what they say, if you can’t make it in Adelaide… 

The Melbourne Storm has won what seems like 500 premierships in the last 20 years and their games aren’t even on the main channel 9.

9GEM simulcast in HD | TV Tonight

Melbourne Storm, a GEM Staple. 

Americans will quickly work out what all of Australia outside of Queensland and New South Wales worked out long ago, if any at all show up: they’ll just think all rugby is the same.

In American football, an extraordinary amount of thought goes into every single play.

Every single player has a clearly defined job that changes every single down.

To do that job requires borderline supernatural physical skills a lot of the time, combined with an incredible amount of brainpower.

Rugby league, on the other hand, requires some big blokes to run into some other big blokes a few times before kicking the ball and starting again.

As if Americans are going to be impressed with seeing Adam Reynolds throw the ball backward 55 times.

They’ve just watched Patrick Mahomes throw the ball forward!

Can Patrick Mahomes throw a ball 100 yards in Mexico City? | Kansas City Star

You can even look at the PR photos that they’ve managed to get out of American “celebrities” out there.

A few of the players took a photo with Australian white rapper of the McCrispy ad fame The Kid Laroi in Vegas.

Kerser must have been busy.

I hate to state the obvious here, but you probably could have got a photo with the Australian rapper in Australia.

They also got a photo with Magic Johnson, and credit to them!

Having said that, it’s well known that Magic Johnson is better at being famous than anyone.

A lot of the time that requires him to feign interest in stuff that he truly could not care less about, like a Brisbane Broncos jersey.

Finally, some players got a photo on the center court at the Lakers’ home court, without a single Laker.

LeBron must have been busy.

I bet it would have been a real thrill for LeBron to meet Kotoni Staggs.

Such a shame that he missed it!

Don’t get me wrong, though. I respect the ambitions of the NRL and Peter V’Landys.

V’Landys has long been a genius at getting himself and his sport into the conversation by going the rival sporting bodies.

Remember when he called Australian Rules football “boring”, or when he likened footy moving to Brisbane in 2020 to “people going to an ABBA concert when they’re AC/DC fans”?

What about his comments after announcing that the NRL grand final would stay in Sydney after a battle with the NSW government where he said that he was pushing for Melbourne because “we wanted to give [the grand final] to a city that needs a major football event”?

Classic PVL.

Naturally the AFL have never responded.

He’s a lot like a combat athlete of the Conor McGregor kind in that way.

You use his name and you get in the news.

You get more famous.

V’Landys does the same thing.

At this point it would be natural to get into a classic code-wars contest between the NRL and the AFL, but I’m hesitant to do so.

If you look at literally any metric from crowd figures, to revenue, to broadcast rights etc. you’ll see that it’s a contest between John Holmes and The Kid Laroi,

So, I’ll leave that.

But let’s look at the positives of Rugbah Leeg going to to Vegas.

Many in the media get a free trip.

That’s awesome, I hope they have a great time.

They probably flew business class which is great for them.

Beyond that, as at the date of writing, not a single player has been found in some off-field debauchery, as documented by the Neds Rugby League Integrity Unit this week.

This is unbelievable.

It’s wins all around!

But returning to reality and away from the positives.

What is the best-case scenario here?

BetMGM (same parent company as Neds) carries an NRL market that finds a few American punters that don’t mind a flutter on the Gold Coast Titans taking on Paramatta?

It will end like Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn’s trip to Vegas in Swingers.

The Rugby League types will quietly mutter “Vegas” to themselves as they join boarding group E on the way home to one of the two states in the entire world that cares about their version of rugby…it’s all the same to me.

The views of GuyWhoLikesSport do not represent the views of Neds and its parent company. 

They are just GuyWhoLikesSport’s views, as he is Victorian and jealous he didn’t get a junket to Vegas.

We love Rugbah Leeg at Neds, and people internally want a quiet word with him.

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