It's magic you know
As I sit here huddled under my bedspread in chill-soaked Hobart, forlornly reminiscing about the weekend just gone and glancing wistfully at the calendar counting down the days until Magic Round 2024, one question keeps rearing in the forefront of my mind.
Where else could host Magic Round?
Now in this dissertation I will expound on the previously offered alternative locations and offer a comprehensive yet concise evaluation on their merit and-*cartoon hook yanks me off stage left*.
Nowhere is the answer. Nowhere else can host Magic Round. Not as good as Brisbane anyway.
Ideas to send the travelling pisshead circus to a regional centre like Wagga Wagga or Townsville just scream Fyre Fest 2.0 and I’m not even sure PVL could organise the bottled water and cheese sandwiches Ja Rule somehow managed to wrangle.
Giving the round to Auckland is a nice idea in sentiment and I’m sure people would travel but the overall facilities and location just don’t compare to the convenience of the entire Suncorp-Caxton precinct, much like Sydney or Melbourne don’t compare either.
As for Perth? Well, there’ll be a second team groundsharing the construction bottleneck that is Shark Park before the NRL even dares acknowlegde the existence of the sovereign state of Western Australia again.
Anyone that has made the pilgrimage to Brisbane for footy’s Splendour in the Grass knows just how perfect the entire setup is. Suncorp itself is a tremendous stadium, mostly undercover, with nary a bad seat in the house (except for the latter half of the Raiders-Bulldogs game where I was somehow in Row 1 and behind the Fox League camera).
As for locale, the precinct is a short hop from Fortitude Valley and Brisbane CBD and the multitude of accommodation options both hubs offer, plus Caxton Street is the Rodeo Drive of alcohol, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Magic Round can be a slug. Sometimes you don’t want to sit in the sun all three days and watch every single minute. Sometimes there are games that make you question your life decisions and wonder if this is all really worth it (cough Roosters-Cowboys cough). Those times are perfect for ducking out to Caxton for a drink or two, or maybe even back to your central accommodation for a quick power nap or refresher before the evening’s activities.
It is incredibly rugby league in Australia to stumble onto a can’t miss phenomenon, execute it perfectly, and then want to change it because reasons.
Magic Round is an idea stolen from the Super League, I know, but lifting it and transplanting it in Brisbane was the easiest wide open slam dunk.
But now the discourse is around sharing, as if the NRL is a pre-school nursery room and the same kid has played with the Thomas the Tank Engine set all day (no I’m not bitter why do you ask?).
It’s not just Magic Round though. The power brokers and talking heads absolutely love stirring up a bit of good old fashioned CONTROVERSY for the sake of clicks and views at the detriment of actually improving the quality of the product.
We saw it in 2020-2021, with the radical shift into glorified oztag with the insane six again revolution, fixing a problem that didn’t exist and then peeling back the fuck up to a semi-acceptable-yet-still stupid medium and masquerading it as INNOVATION.
For reference, I wrote at length about all that jazz back in the early stages of last season, in a piece over on the main site that you can read below.
Or how about the uproar around the decision of some of the NRL’s Pasifika stars to represent their Tier 2 heritage at the World Cup after playing in State of Origin? Clearly the concept of a human being having geographic and cultural allegiances and emotions is a far too nuanced topic for the dinosaurs that walk among us.
Another shameless plug, I covered that topic too on the main site.
I promise you this isn’t a space-filling listicle of my previous works just to satiate the masses this week for a newsletter while I nurse a Magic Round hangover and withdrawal (although both those things are true and in full effect), but rather a launching pad for a more macro point about decision making and direction.
What the hell is going on?
In the last couple of weeks, the folder titled “America game” was hauled out of a box in the basement and dusted off, presented to the media and fans as, you guessed it, an exciting next step on the path to long term innovation and sustainability, financial security, and global growth.
In case you somehow missed the news, the NRL is reportedly ‘exploring’ hosting an opening round double header in Las Vegas of all places to launch the 2024 season, with sites like Allegiant Stadium (home of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders) and Sam Boyd Stadium (home of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas football team).
Both stadiums are state of the art, high capacity and most importantly, rectangular (no more games at the SCG please).
Allegiant holds 65,000 people. I’m naturally a very cynical person so I’ll try and keep open minded about this, but I cannot imagine a scenario where that stadium gets anywhere close to selling out.
If the point is growing a global audience, surely you don’t want to rely on travelling rusted on fans from Australia making a weekend out of it in Sin City, and yet I’d guess that would make up a fair proportion of the attendees, with the remainder being a small diaspora of Aussie aliens living stateside, and casually interested locals wondering what the new sportsball is.
Or maybe you subscribe to the theory that money makes the world go round. PVL said the quiet part out loud when he linked the idea for the Vegas game to the allure of the booming yet still infantile US sports betting industry.
Sports betting in the US has only been legal since 2018 after a federal ruling, but in that short time the industry is already reportedly worth tens of billions of dollars. I don’t blame the money hungry horse man for wanting some of that pie.
PVL has veiled the hunt for cash as searching for entertainment, rolling out this absolute ripsnorter of a quote.
Look, it's entertainment. You don't gamble to win money, you don't do it to become rich. You do it to entertain yourself.
(It's) just like you go to a restaurant and you buy a meal - that's entertainment. As long as you're responsible with what you're spending on that entertainment, it's no different than anything else.
I'm encouraging entertainment. If you treat gambling as entertainment and you budget yourself to (spend) so much on that entertainment, there's no problem with it.
Full disclosure. I like to bet. Not huge amounts or anything but I like throwing on a longshot try scorer multi and hoping I can retire before 30.
But do I bet to entertain myself? God no. If it ever got to that point I’d seek help.
I bet to try and make money because I think I know the game well enough, and I’d imagine 99% of punters reading this would agree.
The framing of this as a relationship between gambling and entertainment is dangerous and points to a romanticisation of what is in actuality a very serious and entrenched issue in Australian society.
Gambling is already a well rooted part of the game, what with half the clubs having a random bookie you’ve never heard of on their backs or in some occasions, even selling their stadium naming rights to betting companies.
Add to that the cavalcade of betting ads before and during broadcasts and you really do wonder what other entertainment medium markets themselves as “well you MIGHT have a good time, provided you choose wisely.” And no, Joel Caine, I will not follow your recommended multis. They suck and they’re boring, do better.
Hell, even just sitting at a pub on Caxton Street on Friday afternoon watching the runway procession of every jersey under the sun (yes, even Titans) making the gentle stroll down from the Barracks to Suncorp, all while good naturedly yelling out that all of your teams suck except mine, I saw at least three betting companies patrolling the area with mics and cameras, filming what will undoubtedly be a heavily edited and mildly funny two minute skit that will be promoted to the top of my Twitter feed.
TAB even came over to try to get our group to yell our team names mindlessly down a lens. Why? I deadpanned the entire experience, while an unnamed friend tried to mumble something and ended up dribbling beer down his shirt. Now that was entertaining.
What is the end goal here from either side? Do the leaders at the NRL think that some random bookie from California is going to pay millions for a shirt sponsorship deal? Say that happens, what do they think they get out of it from the local Australian market? The betting agencies here are already a horde of strict promo-banners with terrible apps that decry all logical user interface, but I’m sure the locals will go international, sure.
Of course, all of this will possibly end up a moot point as the Nevada government laughs at the idea of the funny 13 man game thinking they can muscle into Sin City to use a $2 billion arena for some six again chicanery.
Too bad the Kentucky derby was yesterday.