The NRL is planning to stage the 2020 World Club Challenge in the US or another non-rugby league market.
It's likely that it will be used as a testing measure for the prospect of playing NRL games in the US down the track, along with the 2025 Rugby League World Cup which will be held in the United States and Canada.
Singapore and Hong Kong are other potential options to hold the 2020 WCC.
According to NRL.com, there isn't enough time for the 2019 World Club Challenge to be organised at a neutral venue, with the Sydney Roosters and Wigan to face off in Australia or the UK in February.
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Chief commercial officer Andrew Abdo acknowledged the NRL's intentions to take the WCC into a different market.
"We will continue to look at not just America but other ways we can continue to innovate that has a benefit to our fans locally and abroad so the World Club Challenge, for example, is something we want to think about strategically in terms of where it is played, when it is played and how it is viewed," Abdo said.
It's understood that the NRL wanted to stage a game in California at the start of the 2019 season, but that plan was scuppered by financial and broadcast risks.
"We got really close to it in this draw, but in simple terms we couldn’t make the numbers stack up and I wasn’t prepared to fund it and put the game’s money at risk," NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg said.
New Zealand and England will play a Test in the United States each year leading into the 2025 World Cup, to help promote the code. That annual commitment began this year on June 21 with the Denver Test.
There were even attempts to hold last weekend's Australia/Tonga Test in New York or Hawaii, but promoters went cold on the idea due to the cost.
