Look, I try. I really try.
Right now, I am, honestly trying hard not to sneer unpleasantly in the NRL’s general direction. Because, in very broad terms, the Las Vegas thing seems to have gone pretty well – at least from the point of view of generating interest among NRL punters and getting the season off to a good start.
It is only when you compare the reality to what they were claiming was going to happen, that the sneering truly takes hold and it just sort of … bursts out of me.
See, last year we had all the absurd claims from the NRL and their legion of Fans With Typewriters flown in for the event about the millions of Americans who were going to tune in, and the spike in the betting market that was going to happen – only for just 50,000 to watch on the tube and not even a blip of upturn to show up among poor sap gambling losers betting on the NRL. They just did not care.
Truly, this was not a surprise to anyone who thought about it for longer than five minutes. As football devotees go, I put it to you that few football folk are more devoted than NFL supporters? You and I like or love our own codes of football. But as a breed, they define themselves as “Green Bay Cheeseheads” or “Buffalo Bills Mafia”, etc.
Why on earth would they embrace rugby league? Besides, if it comes to any rugby code making headway in America, as Paul Cully has pointed out, rugby union is already eons ahead, with 50,000 tickets already sold for a match in November between the All Blacks and Ireland in Chicago, a genuine top-shelf professional league extending from New York to LA, and a great grassroots competition in the colleges – all with a World Cup to be held there in 2032!
Rugby league didn’t quite capture the imagination of the American sporting market.Credit: Getty Images
And the NRL thinks an annual couple of matches in Vegas is going to make headway against that? Please. (And yes, I already hear your own sneers about the rise in ratings this year, up to 371,000. Settle, petal. That is simply a function of viewership going from pay tv last year to free-to-air this year, not some explosion in popularity. And still a long way south of the tens of millions promised!)
As for betting, the whole point of gambling on sport is to back your knowledge, your feel for the likely result, over and above the bookies. You don’t want to put your money to a lottery, you want to prove you know your sport better than they do! And that simply doesn’t work making a bet on a sport you don’t know.
If you had a choice between putting your hard-earned on whether the Tigers would win or lose against the Sharks, or on whether the 49ers would beat the Patriots, what would you do? (You know and I know that it’s been 20 years since anyone won money betting on the Tigers, and even that was a fluke, but how would they know?) So why would Patriots fans bet on the NRL? The truth is, they don’t.
But I digress!
For we are yet to get to the most priceless thing of all. See, this year, in the lead-up to Vegas, the big schtick the NRL hit us with was how they were hoping to bring in the big names.
Peter V’landys and Andrew Abdo at Allegiant Stadium.Credit: NRL Photos
President Donald Trump might come! Or Dana White! Or maybe a Hollywood superstar, like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson! And look, if we can’t get them, the Raiders have already reached out to seven-time Super Bowl winner, the greatest quarterback who ever lived, Tom Brady, to get him to blow the horn!
I kid you not. Whole oceans of printer’s ink were spilled, speculating on whether these people would or would not appear at Vegas. It was all just – hold the back page – so exciting!
Ummmm, but who did they actually get? Well, look, none of the above.
But at least they got an NFL superstar to blow the Raiders horn, yes?
No, no, no, not Tom Brady. Another bloke. It was – checks notes – “Tyler Manoa” from the Las Vegas Raiders. Heard of this “NFL superstar”? No, me neither. So I looked him up.
Last year, he was undrafted, before being signed to the Arizona Cardinals Practice Squad on September 5 … before being released by the Cardinals five days later. Then he was indeed signed to the Las Vegas Raiders practice squad on December 10 last year, before, yes, being signed to a futures contract by the Raiders on January 7 this year. But at the age of 25, he is yet to play in a single NFL match.
But look, at least he blew the horn, yes? Like, we really had an NFL bloke blow the Canberra Raiders horn, and THAT was exciting, yes?
Yes, I concede that point. I could barely contain myself.
More interesting though, was what happened then. Though the details are still unclear, it seems Mr Manoa was something less than transfixed by the NRL spectacle he had just formally begun, for he was shortly thereafter forcibly evicted from the stadium, after having beaten up a bathroom in such egregious manner that security was called.
You couldn’t make this up!
In the end, the whole thing was just another case of the hoopla to hapless dynamic in the NRL Vegas venture being so wonderful one can barely raise spit.
But I must, for there is one more unpleasant sneer to come. See, there has also been a curious change of boast, mid-stream from the NRL this year. Last year, as discussed, it was all about how much money the NRL was going to make from the seed money they put down. This year, it was all about how much Vegas made out of the NRL!
“[The tourism chief]” Peter V’landys boasted, “said they had a $100m economic stimulus here in Vegas with the NRL being here.”
I give up. How is Australians spending their share of $100m of their hard-earned in American businesses rather than Australian businesses something to boast about?
So, that’s it. I am done.
I know I have fallen off the wagon to offer these sneers, but I am going to give it another go. This day of publication is Day Zero. From now I am going to see how many days I can go, without doing it again!
My name is Peter FitzSimons and on the NRL’s Vegas venture, I am a sneeraholic.
I must not sneer . . .
I must not sneer . . .
I must not sneer . ..
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