The ‘No helmets, no pads’ stuff that’s rolled out for the NRL’s annual kick off in Sin City suggests to me that their marketing team have no idea how to sell our game in a foreign market, let alone a cultural force like the US that projects infinitely more influence than it absorbs.

One can assume that this sales pitch along with other lines such as ‘the toughest game on earth’ is an attempt to ‘wow’ the American audience and get them to take notice. But what our friends at Rugby League Central have to understand is that they’re not marketing a ‘product’ where one potentially effective sales strategy is to elevate your offering against the so-called competition.

Sport is a cultural beacon and a deeply embedded part of a national fabric. People build affiliations with certain brands and products that result in the formation of consumption habits (as regular or irregular as they might be).

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But while professional sport is a business and is often referred to as a ‘product’ accordingly, the connection between product and consumer is an emotional bond that people become protective of like they are with friends or family members.

Meanwhile, much of the NRL’s attempt to position itself within the local spotlight seems to involve comparisons with the Goliath that is American football. This approach carries tones of trying to pitch rugby league as a superior (I’ll use that word again) product which is such a counterproductive way of trying to open American eyes and eventually hearts to the game.

Explosiveness, physicality and toughness are characteristics of American football that their expansive fanbase are proud of. Given the American football market, which stretches from coast-to-coast and border-to-border is really where the NRL wants to be fishing, what marketing whiz thinks it’s a good idea to go in with a strategy that basically suggests ‘what we have is better than what you’ve got’.

Again, this isn’t Pepsi versus Coke or Nike versus Adidas. People build a part of their identity around the sport they love and the NRL’s play for US attention comes across as a backhand to those that they’re trying to get on board.

You only have to look as far as The Roar to see how parochial we can all get about our sport. Fast-forward to October next year when the NFL juggernaut rolls into town, and imagine if our TVs and radios start saying things such as ‘bigger bodies making bigger hits’ and ‘faster athletes flying higher off the ground’.

I’m sure it might spark some fierce debate but it’s a bit off putting for those of us that love our local codes and misses the mark in creating feelings of interest across a new market.

It shouldn’t be any great surprise that Americans are every bit as parochial as we are and possibly even more protective when even the thinnest-veiled attempt to knock what’s theirs is delivered.

It’s a crammed and insular market that isn’t particularly open to outside influence and won’t respond well to the message that something on the outside is better than what they have on the inside.

The NRL ‘chest-beating’ and sizing itself up to the local football by any metric is going to be met with scoffs. If the NRL needs any reminder of where it sits, take a look at the astronomical value of the salary cap in place for the NFL’s 32 franchises for the 2025-26 season.

It now sits at US$280 million, which is roughly 40 times more than what the NRL’s 17 clubs have to play with. Just the increase from last season was three times the value of the NRL salary cap.

None of this is to say that the Vegas kick off concept is flawed. Clearly, it’s taken the season launch to another level at home. It was interesting to hear Peter V’landys talk about the attention it’s getting in the domestic non-heartland markets of Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide on an episode of NRL 360 this week.

It’s creating a lot of buzz and is now well and truly sitting alongside other season hallmarks such as Magic Round, State of Origin and the Finals series.

While the overwhelming majority of attention that the Vegas launch generates comes from this side of the Pacific, I still think there’s merit in trying to sell the game to the locals (just not how it’s being done). Instead of taking on American football and making comparisons with characteristics that the game and its fans take pride in, why not try and work alongside it.

While Peter and his team are trawling up and down the strip this weekend, they’d be well advised to take a detour deep into the desert to dig a hole and drop off the ‘No helmets. No pads. No timeouts’ campaign, then come back with something along the lines of ‘Keep contact alive through summer’.

The curtain came down on the 2024-25 NFL season earlier this month and it’s not until the last round of the NRL regular season that teams start charting their course to the Bay Area for Super Bowl 60.

Action on wooden floors and ice in arenas around the country remains until June, as does the United Football League which appears to be one of the more serious concepts as an NFL understudy of sorts. Of course, the main entertainment running throughout most of the NRL’s season is played on diamonds but the timing of our season presents an opportunity in the US market.

This to me is the NRL’s sweet spot for marketing in the US. You want men running into each other while trying to move an oval shaped ball up a rectangular shaped field – we’re here for you when you can’t get it at home.