Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com – 01/03/2025 – Rugby League Las Vegas – NRL: Round 1 – Penrith Panthers v Cronulla Sharks – Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, USA – Izack Tago of Penrith is tackled by William Kennedy and Cameron McInnes of Cronulla

A LEADING player agent has called for the NRL to take ownership of rugby league worldwide in the same way as the NFL with American football.

Chris Orr played for the Gold Coast Titans during the Super League War and spent the 1998 season in the UK with Huddersfield Giants before becoming an agent after hanging up his boots.

As well as a host of NRL and NRLW stars, Orr’s Pacific Sports Management advises former South Sydney Rabbitohs U20 prospect turned gridiron star Jordan Mailata, and the former Scotland international believes the Australian domestic competition needs to lead the way with rugby league globally.

“I do like the NFL, how they own the sport,” Orr told James Graham’s The Bye Round podcast.

“When you go and watch the NFL in the UK or we talk to people on the ground around here, it’s NFL Australia, it’s NFL UK, it’s NFL Mexico.

“That’s something I think, if I think the NRL could do something, we should take ownership of the game of rugby league worldwide.

“The NRL should own it and it should be NRL Fiji, NRL New Zealand, NRL Australia, NRL USA, and then we’d have complete control over the international calendar, broadcast rights, sponsorship rights, we could host games in Dubai, we could have Wigan versus Parramatta Eels.

“We could own the game and make it a big spectacle worldwide.”

Or even NRL Europe, maybe?

Talk of that might have cooled for now, but the sport in the UK remains divided following a boardroom coup at the RFL earlier this year and amid its ongoing strategic review led by former governing body chief executive Nigel Wood.

Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys said earlier this year they were open to combining forces with Super League, but only if they were approached by representatives from these shores first.

Orr’s views come with the NFL in the midst of its annual slate of international fixtures, with the first of three games in London this year taking place yesterday as the Minnesota Vikings beat the Cleveland Browns 21-17 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

The NFL is also heading to Australia next year when the LA Rams are the nominal home team to face an as-yet-unnamed opponent at the 100,000-capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The NRL, meanwhile, will continue its own US expansion push with a return to the Las Vegas Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium on February 28 next year.

Thanks to the vagaries of the NFL’s scheduling, Mailata and his Philadelphia Eagles team-mates will not be the other opponent as they are designated an away opponent for the Rams in 2026.

However, the 28-year-old offensive tackle’s presence in the NFL is helping drive subscribers to its content from outside the sport’s traditional audience – something those executives in the UK who want in-house streaming platform Super League+’s offering to be improved will be taking note of.

“It’s all about the take-up of their content,” Orr said.

“The international programme they run, it’s about how many Australians and New Zealanders now are turning onto NFL [Game] Pass , watching the game, because Jordan Mailata has created so much hype about it.

“The English players who have gone across, the African players who have gone across, Mexican players who are going across, it’s creating a take-up of their content.”