THE US should already love rugby league, a sport which shares many traits with the hugely popular sports of American and Canadian football, but without the helmets and the stoppages.

This weekend, it gets a chance to see rugby league in all its glory, as teams from the sport’s heartlands in England and Australia fly to Las Vegas for a showpiece event on Saturday night.

When US sports fans think of rugby, they likely automatically think of rugby union.

The union code already has a presence in the country in the shape of Major League Rugby, but they are missing out if they think rugby is just rugby union. Given the chance to assess both, they’d probably prefer league.

This is the second year rugby league has played showcase games in Las Vegas. In 2024, National Rugby League (NRL) games involving Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Brisbane Broncos and Sydney Roosters started what looks set to become an annual showpiece at the Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada.

The event has been expanded this year as English Super League teams join their Australian counterparts.

The featured NRL games will see Canberra Raiders take on New Zealand Warriors, and current NRL champions Penrith Panthers face Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks.

Additional games for 2025 involve two of the biggest names in English rugby, Warrington and Wigan, and a women’s ashes international game between England and Australia.

A warm-up match for the 2024 event pit the United States against Canada in a game that finished 16-16. 

Given the current political tensions between the US and Canada, it would have made such a warm-up game an even bigger draw this time around, but instead the USA were set to face Greece on Wednesday.

That was before a floodlight failure at the Silver Bowl Park due to theft of copper from the stadium’s power system, and the game was called off.

They will try again on Friday, when the USA women’s team will also face Greece.

There is a space for another rugby-style sport in the United States. The NFL season lasts about five minutes. For the teams that don’t make the playoffs, which is more than half of the league, the season is over after four months.

It leaves plenty of room in the sporting calendar for rugby league to find a footing, and in terms of participation, college athletes will find many of their basketball, American football, or even football skills transferable to rugby league.

American football is a high-speed, high-impact sport concentrated around individual moments. Rugby league has those moments too, but between all of that is the flow of a game, the powerful rhythm of forward play, the building of momentum, field position, and the speed, power, and skill of the backs.

Rugby league is a closer cousin to the NFL than union. League has a limited number of tackles (six) similar to four downs in American football. In both sports, the ball is played behind from where the tackle was made, only in rugby league this happens instantaneously.

The ball is often kicked on the last tackle if the team didn’t gain enough territory to reset the tackle count.

Field goals (extra points) are kicked after crossing the line for a try or touchdown, and they can also be kicked in general play for additional points.

If TV broadcasts adapted the American football-style graphics for rugby league, with tackles shown instead of downs, and familiar scoreboards and graphics, it wouldn’t take long for a US and Canadian audience to get used to this sport.

“How it’s presented on TV will be a big thing,” Wigan CEO Kris Radlinski told the Love Rugby League website in the build-up to Saturday’s event.

“We’ll get the full treatment from Fox. A typical Sky game has a 12-camera production, but this will have 22.

“It’ll be insight like you’ve never seen before. It will deliver. The players will deliver, I guarantee everyone around the world that.”

In the NFL this year, there has been controversy around a play used by the eventual Super Bowl champions, Philadelphia Eagles, nicknamed the “tush push.”

It is effectively a rugby union maul applied to American football. When close to the opposition line, the quarterback lines up behind the big offensive linemen while other players push them over from behind.

This is a standard rugby union play, but in rugby league this would be called as an obstruction penalty.

The rules of rugby league were originally altered from rugby union to make the game more exciting for paying spectators.

Northern clubs broke away from the rugby union to allow working-class players to become professional and be compensated for taking time off work.

It meant some of the match-day income went, as it should, to those providing the entertainment, and in return spectators got, in theory, a more exciting game.

As the highest level of rugby in the world, Australia’s NRL is positioned to take the biggest advantage of these games in the US.

“It's not just about how many fans come to the game this weekend, it's about how many fans we can get interested in the sport throughout the season, watching on television, streaming, playing NRL Fantasy, being engaged,” said NRL CEO, Andrew Abdo.

“Slowly but surely, we want Americans to not only think about NFL and NBA and NHL, but add NRL to that repertoire of sports that they follow and love.”

But Super League clubs have their own charm, historical interest, and are also playing at a very high level, not far off the NRL.

“The reaction has been incredible,” said Warrington Wolves CEO Karl Fitzpatrick. 

“I’ve not known anything like it since we made the announcement last year — the interest we’ve had from media outlets, commercial partners, and from some of our broadcasters.

“I’ve never known our broadcasters to be as excited and to have put as much resource and energy into promoting our game.

“They’re approaching it like a fight night, they’re doing a countdown to the game. So it’s enthused all of the Rugby League community and got wider appeal.”

The 2024 event filled around half of the Allegiant Stadium’s 65,000 capacity, but there is hope the addition of these extra games will see the attendance closer to 60,000 this time around.

In association football, league and cup matches being played abroad have been rightly condemned. Should the same opposition apply to rugby league matches abroad? Probably, but it feels like there is a different dynamic in the sport compared to football.

Rugby league is nowhere near as popular globally and there is a sense things like this are being done as much for the survival of the sport as for extracting as much money as possible from it, as is the case in football.

Warrington and Wigan could lose money on this trip — Wigan especially as they are losing out on gate income from what would have been their home game, yet Radlinski adds: “I can’t overstate how big a moment this is for rugby league,” reinforcing how much he believes such events are worth to the game in the long run.

Some money will be recouped from the ticket sales in Paradise, and those involved from Super League and its clubs believe it’s worth the gamble, especially when there is also a potential long-term benefit.

The games begin with Warrington versus Wigan at 1.30pm local time, 9.30pm UK time on Saturday night, and will end around nine hours later with the conclusion of the Penrith versus Cronulla headline game.

If rugby league plays its cards right, the US could fall in love with this entertaining, familiar sport.