Professional Rugby in America: Introduction

Sometimes American rugby fans have to feel a little sorry for themselves. We love rugby but only get to see the Eagles play at home two or three times a year. We get the Las Vegas leg of the IRB Sevens Series, which is nice, but the rest of the year the Series is either on in the middle of night, or not available to stream period. Our youth national teams only get to assembly a couple of times a year. Our women’s team doesn’t get a lot of funding or playing time. We have excellent domestic competitions such as the DI-A, DI, Women’s Premier League, and Elite Cup and Varsity Cup (we’ll just say the last two will go off without a hitch), but none of these competitions get much broadcast time apart from a couple of Glendale Raptors matches per year. All in all, it can be very frustrating at times (very rewarding to be sure, but still frustrating).

Still, the biggest thing rubbing salt into our wounds is a lack of professional competition in not only the country, but the hemisphere. Every continent, save Antarctica and the Americas, has a professional tournament. Europe has at least six full-time competitions, Japan has the Top League, and of course there is Super Rugby in the Southern Hemisphere. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have access to these competitions because we do get a lot of rugby on television these days, but it’s not the same as having your own league and own competition. We are consistently teased every few years about some sort of professional competition, but none of those ever come to fruition. Now, American fans are even facing the prospect that a professional cricket competition will take place before rugby. Again, frustrating.

So, what are the chances that the U.S. ever getting a professional competition? Personally, I don’t know and I think it would be a fool’s errand to put your neck out there and make a prediction. There are a lot of challenges to making that happen, first and foremost is money. I’m not saying that it can’t happen, nothing would make me happier, but it’s going to be difficult. Every fan seems to have their own theory about why or why not it will happen and that’s great, but what is the situation really like? To answer this question, we are going to take this next week to look at one piece of that puzzle a day. By the end, hopefully we’ll have come up with a better picture of whether professional rugby can work in this country. Here is the schedule:

Monday: Players
Tuesday: Infrastructure (Stadium, Television, etc.)
Wednesday: Youth
Thursday: Money
Friday: Can it happen?