The Great American Dream: Why Vegas is boldest bid yet to conquer US market

The NRL’s plan to play a season-opening double-header in Las Vegas for the next five seasons shapes as the boldest attempt by the game to gain traction in the lucrative American sporting market.

Past attempts have invariably been half-hearted, one-off efforts that have failed to win recognition or achieve any significant results.

This time the NRL is all-in, enlisting the support of as many A-list Australians as possible to help support the initiative.

The games featuring Manly v South Sydney and Sydney Roosters v Brisbane will be played at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday, March 2 (US time) and will be broadcast live in Australia on Sunday, March 3.

Past attempts

League visionary Harry Sunderland would have given 100 per cent support to the NRL’s plans of playing their season-opening double-header in Las Vegas in 2024.

The former Queensland administrator, sportswriter, manager of multiple Kangaroos tours and BBC commentator, who died in 1964, had long supported plans for the game to gain a foothold in the United States.

Sunderland, who played a significant role in the introduction of the game in France in the 1930s, made his first attempts to stage a game on US soil as manager of the 1929-30 Kangaroos.

Sunderland wrote to three California universities with the offer to play a series of demonstration games at Stanford, California or St Marys.

According to the San Francisco Examiner, [the Australian team] “is willing to line up, with eleven men, against a regular American football team, and to see what would happen”.

The paper explained: “There are 28 men in the Australian party. In addition to meeting an American football team, they would be willing to line up with 13 men on a side and give a demonstration of their own Rugby code.”

Sunderland had stated that the only financial assistance required would be “expenses from Panama Canal to San Francisco”, but the offer was not taken up

The next opportunity for rugby league to gain recognition in the US took place in 1954 when Australia and New Zealand played exhibition matches in Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The matches had been organised by an American sportswriter Ward B Nash, who had been introduced to the possibilities of league by Sunderland on an earlier visit.

Initially, Nash had wanted the Great Britain touring team of 1954 to play two games in the US on their journey home from Australia and New Zealand, but the RFL declined the opportunity.

Nash had secured guarantees for games in Long Beach and Los Angeles and his offer was eventually taken up by Australian and New Zealand officials, who agreed to travel to the United States after the inaugural World Cup in France later that year.

The games went ahead in late November, the first on November 26 postponed by a day due to fog.

The circumstances of the fog rolling in sparked a famous incident involving Australian winger Denis Flannery who was abandoned in the heavy mist by his team-mates and only discovered the game was cancelled when informed by a young boy walking his dog.

Sunderland was an interested spectator and had helped to publicise the games for Nash.

However, only 1,000 attended the game at Long Beach and 4,554 turned up to The Coliseum in LA.

Australian won 30-12 in Long Beach and 28-18 in Los Angeles.

It was over 30 years before the next attempt was made to garner interest in the huge US sporting market but the staging of a State of Origin match at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach, the same venue that hosted a 1954 game, attracted far more interest from the Australian television audience than it did in the local media.