Sports tourism used to mean spending a week in Dunedin watching the Jays in spring training, or running the Berlin marathon with a gang from the Beaches Running Club, or going to New York to watch the US Open, or across to Jersey for the Super Bowl. No more.

The days of flying somewhere to see your favourite team have morphed into your favourite team flying somewhere to see you. This spring, The Wigan Warriors played theWarrington Wolves, two Northern England towns just 18 km apart, to a packed Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, among them 15,000 British rugby fans who didn’t have to fly 8,400 kilometres or spend thousands of US dollars each to see a rugby match, but did.

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