Peter V’landys has reignited code wars with the AFL and rugby union, taking cheeky digs at both rival sports after touching down in Las Vegas.

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The Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) chairman’s arrival in Sin City was delayed after the flight he and NRL CEO Andrew Abdo were on was turned back due to air conditioning issues.

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Knights CEO Peter Parr and a host of Newcastle fans were also on the flight, which was in the air for over an hour before being diverted back to Sydney.

The plane eventually got back in the air and landed on Wednesday morning (AEDT), where V’landys spoke with Fox Sports News ahead of the league’s third season opener in Vegas.

The ARLC chairman was quick to take a dig at the AFL when asked about the aeroplane mishap, joking next time he is going to “make sure that the plane’s not serviced by the AFL engineers”.

“That’s what’s happened I think… they’ve spiked the air conditioner,” he added.

The AFL weren’t the only ones to come in the firing line, with V’landys also taking a shot at rugby union as he opened up on the NRL’s plans to expand the game further.

While reiterating that the NRL is in America “for the long haul”, the ARLC chairman once again confirmed there are several other countries the league is keen to play regular season games in as part of a ‘Global Round’, including Abu Dhabi, Japan and China.

In specific reference to the latter two countries, V’landys said he sees an opportunity to win over fans who are used to the slower pace of rugby union.

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“Markets like Japan and Hong Kong are used to that other game that only goes for 30 minutes, I think it’s called rugby union,” he said.

“So when they see the real game, rugby league, I think we can actually migrate them over. The key performance indicator for entertainment is how long the ball is in play.

“In rugby league it’s 60 minutes, in rugby union it’s 30 minutes. So no one would know what hit them in Japan and in Hong Kong when we take the game over.”

V’landys added that the NRL has “always looked” at Miami as another market, while they also want to go back to England considering the success of the Kangaroos tour.

“Anything we can do to help the game in England that’s very important to us,” he added.

But for now, the full focus is on this weekend’s games in Vegas. The NRL shortened this year’s schedule to three games after running into issues in 2025 with the length of the day.

Allegiant Stadium, which will once again play host to this year’s event, does not allow pass-outs, meaning fans who arrived for the first game were then made to wait a total of nine hours if they wanted to watch all four matches.

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It led to a much smaller crowd being in attendance for the evening’s blockbuster game between the Sharks and Panthers, prompting the NRL to adapt this year with the women’s Test match being cut from the schedule.

While there have naturally been a few hurdles to jump along the way, V’landys said the Vegas project has been an overwhelming success.

“All the clubs that have been here before are desperate to come back again, so I think we’ll continue with Vegas,” he said.

“The Vegas Tourist Bureau has been fantastic to us, they sponsor it and they want to grow it even bigger. We came here three years ago, we went into the Bureau and they looked at us and they thought we were totally and utterly mad. We normally are, but then now they say, ‘Well, geez, you were right, the vision was correct, we can’t believe how this has grown’.

“… They’re (other cities) all approaching us, that’s the beauty of it. When we first floated the scheme everyone thought that they won’t get anyone there, they’d be lucky to get 300 or 400 people to come over but when you’re bringing 20,000 it gets their attention.”