In that case, that’ll make it easier for opponents to tackle them, I think.
The NRL is talking to FanDuel about a potential deal to stream live matches on the latter’s website.
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Stole this from a tweet:
The NRL wants to be a gambling business that plays a bit of rugby league on the weekends!
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The sad fact is I would believe this, gambling is where a lot of their money comes from as of now.
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Michael Maguire was today appointed as the new NSW Blues coach.
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The game will take place at the DW Stadium in Wigan on Saturday 24 February at 8:00pm (Sunday 25 February 7:00am AEDT).
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Documents obtained by AFR Weekend provide the clearest insight yet about what exactly the NRL is planning. It will pay for more than 90 business-class flights with Fiji Airways, 32 economy flights, and six days of accommodation at Resorts World, a luxury Las Vegas hotel, for least 128 players and club staff. An average business-class flight on Fiji Airways is almost $16,000, but the NRL costs are subsidised through advertising deals. pic.twitter.com/rmBhOPhYKW
— sportsindustry (@footyindustryAU) December 9, 2023
AFR reports 17,000 tickets to the doubleheader had been sold by yesterday morning, at least 5,000 of which were sold to people living in the US.
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Some weird things in some of the call-outs there.
The NRL has an exclusive deal in place to broadcast the first match of the doubleheader (Rabbitohs v Manly), while a second match will be simulcast on Nine
Seems to be missing a few words in there, figuring they are getting confused with getting it on TV in the US on FS1.
I presume they are meaning that the early game will be on Fox Sports in Australia exclusively while Nine will take the 3.30pm game (which as usual, will be the lead-in to the news). No surprises there, same as a normal Sunday.
Allegiant Stadium is the home field of the Las Vegas Raiders and can sit up to 65,000 people at an NFL match. It’s a much smaller field than NRL clubs typically play on.
Makes it sound like they’d have to compromise on the size of the field to get it going - but they play a fair bit of soccer there too (not MLS, but big club exhibitions and some CONCACAF games) - I guess the bottom stands are retractable. The size will be fine.
Worth knowing that in soccer config (with the bottom stands removed) the capacity is only 61,000 - it can be expandable slightly from what I understand but they wouldn’t bother for this.
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NFL field width is 49m wide v 68m for NRL, and reportedly there isn’t much room to expand the width, certainly not to 68m
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Soccer is also 68 metres wide, though. I’ve looked at a couple of videos where soccer has been played there, and I’ll agree that fitting the technical area in is quite a squeeze even with seats retracted, but it does get done. Dimensions would’ve been a non-negotiable point, I’m sure.
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The dimensions of Allegiant Stadium means the field will be almost 800 square metres smaller than those at the likes of Accor Stadium, Allianz Stadium, Suncorp Stadium and AAMI Park.
Instead of having 68 metres from sideline to sideline, there will be only 63 metres. And when it comes to the distance from tryline to tryline, it will be 96 metres rather than 100 metres. An NFL field is only 49 metres wide.
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Let’s all relive this 2004 test match. It’s so weird seeing the conversions done with the posts at the back of the goal area.
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I do kinda eat my hat on this after reading the size of the plate they grow the grass on - it’s 400 x 220 feet. The width equates to 73 1/3 yards, which is basically the gridiron field plus ten yards on either side.
If they use all the grass - they’d probably have to narrow the field by a metre or two on each side in order to get a decent amount of run-off, for safety issues I imagine.
They probably do this for soccer too although it’s not by a huge amount - but it also means it wasn’t chosen as an option for the 2026 FIFA WC, say. (That said, it’s not the only place having that problem - there was a push to host the final at SoFi Stadium in LA and that was in the bid book, but FIFA is telling them now that it’s about 9 metres or so too small on each side; much of that is in extra run-off that they want for a match like that.)
The length of the field should be fine, which avoids that silly situation as seen in @Techster’s post… the minimum in-goal of six metres (as seen in something like Super League) would require an extra metre at each end compared to a gridiron field, and NRL standard in-goal a further two metres… but the length is fine.
I guess I flagged it to say that it was making it sound like they were going to play it on something NFL width. It doesn’t sound quite as bad as that, although I wonder how wingers and such would be affected by, say, 2 metres less of turf on their side of the field. 
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They look like they are promoting it really well!
One of their stars was interviewed on Nine News last night and he said it was like a faster version of American football. Those kinds of endorsements should help enormously.
Google Australia has released a new Doodle, celebrating the life and career of rugby league legend Arthur Beetson (1945-2011).
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The report says that under the new NRL rules, the Panthers now have ten days to convince Luai to stay at the club, while Luai can also pull out of the Tigers deal.
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