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- National Rugby Football League has ambitious plans to launch in 2022 an eight team professional league in America
- Previously I looked at if Rugby can be considered a global sport
- Interview with Commissioner Michael Clements reveals the league’s plan to launch and grow the game in the US
How do you try to start a new professional sports league, especially in one of the most saturated sports markets in the world, North America? Well, the National Rugby Football League (NRFL) is taking this challenge on.
It’s a question I’ve addressed at Business Of Sport on countless occasions, from the XFL 1.0 to XFL 2.0 and to even the AAF (remember that league?).
Rugby is one sport that seems ripe for leagues to spring up all over the world, especially off the back of the successful 2019 World Cup in Japan.
One market that would seem to have huge potential is the US. However, the sport has suffered some false dawns in the drive to launch a proper professional league. In 2012, the American Professional Rugby Competition investigated if a league was feasible, but got no further, while in 2016 PRO Rugby launched but lasted only four months.
Mixed into this is also that USA Rugby, the governing body of the sport in the country, has filed for bankruptcy in March 2020.
Despite all this, the NRFL plans to become America’s first fully-fledged professional rugby union league with a planned kick off in 2022.
I spoke with Michael Clements, Commissioner of the NRFL about its hopes for success, its approach to launching the league, and more.
The scale of the ambitions that the NRFL has is to be admired, especially announcing this plan during a global pandemic.
Clements explained: “The NRFL is bringing the largest tackle sport in the world to the most lucrative sports market – America. America has the largest pool of elite tackle sport athletes, world-class stadiums and a massive fan base addicted to tackle sports.”
“The United States has more than 33 million fans either very interested or interested in rugby. According to Statista, there are approximately 1.5 million rugby participants in the United States with more than 900 college teams.”
Yet the NRFL has actually been active before this. In fact in 2014 and 2015, it held eight combines (in which athletes showcase physical and mental skills and athleticism in drill-based scenarios).
For the first combine in April 2014, over 130 players participated, this included just under 50 athletes with NFL experience also. In fact the NRFL had plans to hold exhibition games in the US in 2015 but due to lack of approval by USA Rugby these were cancelled (including one game planned against the Leicester Tigers at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia).
After these false dawns however, it is full steam ahead for the NRFL.
“The League is currently in the building stage and has the flexibility to shift based on this horrific global pandemic. The NRFL has currently slated promotional activity for late 2020/21 and match play for 2022,” said Celments.
He added: “The markets that will house the founding eight NRFL teams have not been finalized. The League has established a shortlist of markets suitable to put one of the best products on the pitch globally. The League’s extensive research considered several important factors, such as: venues, demographic, tackle sport fan base, and media.”
A key part of this league will also be the implementation of a salary cap, quite a novel approach for European sports, but very standard in sports here in the US. The NRFL wants to have a “competitive” salary cap in line with the international rugby market, with an aim of the league having a cap like the English Premiership Rugby (at $9 million a year). As outlined by Forbes, this would mean that the average salary for a NRFL player could be roughly $250,000.
Clements outlined the thinking behind this approach.
“The NRFL is building a premier professional league with world-class professional talent.”
“As such, the league plans a salary cap that will be competitive with the international rugby market. We want our players to be 100% full-time rugby players, which means paying them on par with the rest of the big rugby leagues globally. It is also important for the League to control costs as it grows and expands,” he said.
In addition, the plan is that all NRFL clubs will be owned by the league (much like the XFL and MLS).
NRFL Launch Low Down
- Kick-off in 2022
- Consist of eight teams – cities have not been revealed yet
- Centralized ownership system in where all the clubs are owned by the league
Becoming Mainstream – Partnership With NFL Alumni Association
In an extremely interesting approach, another key plank of the NRFL’s approach to launching its league has been to partner with the National Football League (NFL) Alumni Association, whose mission is to help former players in their post-NFL lives.
The main reason for the partnership is, according to a press release from the NRFL “to launch a world-class high-performance center for tackle sport athletes. These athletes from around the world have a goal of breaking into a NFL roster or converting into a global rugby athlete in the NRFL.”
In fact, the NFL Alumni Association is such a core part of the fledgling league that it has also joined the Founders Group.
The storied history of the global sport of rugby has significantly influenced our game of professional football from the teamwork aspect to the term ‘touchdown’.
The NFL Alumni Association is pleased to support and endorse the NRFL in bringing the other tackle sport to the absolute highest professional level in the United States.
Bart Oates, President, NFL Alumni Association
As explained further by Clements, the NRFL see it as helping the league to “reach a more global audience”, while also “creating a high-performance center for tackle-sport athletes that will serve as a potential feeding ground for both leagues.”
He also added that this approach means that a “pathway” can be created for American football players to “transition” to the sport of rugby.
The NRFL will not be without competition however, Major League Rugby was due to have its 2020 season before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has cancelled play until 2021. More worryingly for the MLR, one of the teams, the Colorado Raptors, has pulled out of the organisation.
Can the NRFL Actually Succeed?
A competent, fully functioning professional league in America would be a huge boost to the game of rugby globally.
The litmus test, like all new leagues, will be if you can either pull in existing fans, or convert interested observers to becoming fans.
The NRFL is putting in the work now to make sure it passes that test.
