Latest news with #post-Vegas
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
NRL clubs looking to fight off Las Vegas 'hangover'
Ivan Cleary expects Penrith will be in for a "comedown" after their win in Las Vegas as the four NRL clubs guard against starting slowly on return to Australia. It's back to reality for Cronulla, Canberra, the Warriors and the Panthers on Monday (AEDT) as the four clubs begin their journeys home from the NRL's second annual trip to Vegas. The quartet of teams have this coming weekend to reminisce on their Stateside visit, which ended in victories for Penrith and Canberra. FULL TIME 🐾#NRLVegas #NRLPanthersSharks — NRL (@NRL) March 2, 2025 As the four teams are overcoming jet-lag, the remaining round-one fixtures will play out in Australia from Thursday. It was a slow start to the season for the four clubs that made the trip to Vegas last year: none posted a winning record across the four weeks that followed their matches in Sin City. And the task of backing up could be more challenging this year. While last year's Vegas visitors played one another in round two, the 2025 teams face sides that did not have to travel to the other side of the world to begin their NRL seasons. The Panthers lost their first game on return from last year's World Club Challenge in England, and Cleary is bracing himself that his team could find itself with a "hangover" again in 2025. "There'll definitely be a comedown, for sure," he said after the four-time reigning premiers beat Cronulla in Vegas. "The Manchester trip last year, we felt that. The time difference is a lot more, so that's more difficult. I think naturally there's going to be (a comedown). "It's just our job over the next couple of weeks to try and navigate through that." Cleary was pleased the Panthers' next game was against the Sydney Roosters in Parramatta, where the Panthers will play the majority of home games this year while Penrith Park is refurbished. "It's handy that we're playing our first game at CommBank next week against the Roosters, which will be a big occasion," he said. The Sharks appear to have the toughest task ahead of them as the only one of the four Vegas teams to play away from home in round two. Cronulla travel to Townsville to face North Queensland in one of the NRL's toughest away trips, and go on to visit Canberra, Perth, Newcastle and Brisbane before round 10. Coach Craig Fitzgibbon said his staff would be working to guard against a post-Vegas hangover. "We've got a plan in place for that, but we're obviously still just addressing what happened in the game before we get to the next game," he said. "We've got a thorough plan, we have to because we're travelling a bit in the first six weeks."
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Viva Las Vegas: will ‘biggest game in British rugby league' widen reach?
It started with a speculative email sent late at night almost a year ago but on Saturday evening, Kris Radlinski's vision for Super League will become a reality live and in living colour in the bright lights of Las Vegas. The Wigan Warriors CEO was at home, like so many others, watching the National Rugby League's (NRL) inaugural venture into the United States at Allegiant Stadium just outside Las Vegas. His immediate thought: how does British rugby league muscle in on the opportunity? And so went the email that could potentially change the landscape of Super League for years to come: or at least, that is the tentative hope, anyway. What was a two-game event last year has now doubled in size. On Saturday, two NRL fixtures – Canberra versus New Zealand Warriors and Penrith versus Canterbury – plus the first Super League game played in North America between Wigan and Warrington, as well as a women's Test, will be played in front of over 50,000 supporters – many of them existing rugby league fans, but some of them new. It is rare for Super League and the NRL to work hand-in-hand like this, but there is a shared goal of collectively cracking the US sports market and exposing rugby league to the masses worldwide. Super League has tried to widen its net before, taking league fixtures to Camp Nou, Wollongong and even pushing the North American narrative with Canadian franchise Toronto Wolfpack. All of that, ultimately, left little in the way of a legacy. So can Wigan versus Warrington in Las Vegas be different? Well, potentially: not least because the NRL's marketing budgets and aggressive media-drive automatically make this bigger than anything Super League has attempted on its own. 'I've said before, this is the biggest game in Super League history, but I think I was wrong,' the Warrington CEO, Karl Fitzpatrick, said. 'I think it's actually the biggest game in British rugby league history, going back to 1895.' It is a bold claim, and the cynics would argue we've been here before and seen a sojourn into new territory serve as nothing more than a one-off. But the very presence of the NRL makes this a big deal for British rugby league to start with. This is only year two of a five-year arrangement to take games to Las Vegas and with almost 10,000 Super League fans crossing the Atlantic this weekend, it seems certain that they will be invited back to the party next year, with clubs already queuing up to follow in Wigan and Warrington's footsteps. When we hear of executives talking about audience growth, we automatically assume the conversation revolves around new, overseas fans. But Australia – where league rules supreme – experienced a huge boom post-Vegas last year with supporters flocking to the NRL. Fitzpatrick is hopeful this weekend can produce something similar in England, where large parts of the country still have little no league presence. 'They've called it the halo effect back in Australia,' he explains. 'The interest in the NRL surged in a way they didn't think possible back home after last year's Vegas games. All of Super League is promoting this because they know the benefits could be astronomical. This is unlike anything we've ever done. We're going into the biggest sporting market on the planet, armed with the NRL's finances.' Sky Sports, as partners of Super League, are also buying in. They have invested huge sums to promote this and while stunts like inviting Michael Buffer to the season-opener between Wigan and Leigh, as well as constructing a Vegas-style wedding chapel outside Wigan's ground, may seem tacky, they're a sign that the broadcaster is interested. And interest means money, which can only be handy with a TV renewal looming. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion Wigan have form for trying to be different. This venture will actually cost them money as they're giving up a home game but their owner, Mike Danson, is willing to take the financial hit. This, they sense, is the chance to shake things up not just for the good of the Warriors, but the competition at a time when IMG are urging all clubs to think outside the box. 'It's an absolutely colossal moment for the sport in this country,' Radlinski explains. 'We say that a lot, but Sky are investing money we've never seen before. We used to go to them with ideas; with Vegas, they're coming to us. What it could do for everyone is something I didn't appreciate when I first sent that email. This is not about us. We will all benefit from this. Success for me is two other clubs going next year.' Super League and the NRL being aligned in Las Vegas this weekend and in the years ahead also has ripple effects. There is talk of the World Club Challenge, the meeting of the two major champions, being held there in 2026. Talk of the NRL buying Super League and taking it under its profitable and successful wing won't go away: this, at a time when English clubs are threatening to oust the RFL chair, Simon Johnson, too. Of course we've been here before: but not quite on this scale. British rugby league has never been armed so heavily with the tools with which to finally spread its wings.
