Where the NRL failed (apart from in Las Vegas)
America said no. The NRL managed to achieve one thing with their grand experiment in wowing Americans by playing two opening round matches in Las Vegas: flying more people across the planet to report on a footy match than actually watched the matches on TV locally. Well, not quite, but the NRL must have forked out what economists refer to as a shitload of money to fly half of the Australian media to Vegas to drum up hype for the league double header that managed to score just 61,000 TV viewers at best. The NRL can try to put a positive spin on this or debate where their marketing strategies failed, but if the aim was to get Americans excited about rugby league ("it's like the NFL, but no helmets and without play stopping every time someone touches the ball"), their big mistake was going to Las Vegas at all. Sure, it did get the cashed up young league players away from the toxic gambling culture of NSW for a bit, but Las Vegas is the absolute worst place* to attract a