Rugby Continues To Grow In The U.S. Off The Back Of Major League Rugby

Major League Rugby recently completed its eighth season, as the New England Free Jacks secured a hat-trick of championships, defeating the Houston Sabercats in front of nearly 6,000 fans in Rhode Island.

After well-documented ups and downs in its early years — which included clubs folding and a lack of funds — MLR has become a consistent breeding ground for new talent and a stabilizing force in the U.S. rugby ecosystem.

MLR’s depth will be on display on July 19th as the USA Eagles test their mettle against England, currently ranked number five in the world. Eagles head coach Scott Lawrence has named a 23-man team, 22 of whom play in the MLR, including first-team All-MLR stars Pono Davis (prop, Houston), Chris Hilsenbeck (flyhalf, Chicago), and 2024 number one overall draft pick Erich Storti (fullback, Anthem).

“The league is growing. I think this year we saw more professional minutes for our players,” Lawrence told the media on the eve of the match. “We’d like to see more [minutes], but we’re better with Major League Rugby as a playing nation. It’s a benefit to us. We do see that there are some areas, in terms of playing minutes for the Americans going up, so we have a bigger base to pick from.”

Year-on-year, the league continues to attract more viewership as the standard of play increases, clubs invest in new facilities, and the competition becomes an ever-present entity in the U.S. sporting calendar.

Ahead of its eighth season, MLR signed a broadcast deal with ESPN that saw every single league game broadcast on ESPN+. The final was shown on ESPN+ and ESPN2, and was aired in Spanish and Portuguese on ESPN Deportes and ESPN Brazil.

The belief behind the ESPN deal was that being part of the “Worldwide Leader’s” catalog would help the league expand its fan base. “We’re really happy to be on ESPN this year,” MLR Commissioner Nic Benson told me ahead of the championship match in Rhode Island. “We need to go where the sports fans are. Early numbers have our viewership multiples higher than our digital product was before.”

In-person attendance is also up. Both the Chicago Hounds and the Utah Warriors posted record attendances in recent seasons. On championship weekend in Rhode Island, roughly 2,000 fans attended the gameday FanFest in a market with no team (although the Free Jacks are admittedly just down the road in Quincy, MA).

Part of the reason for bringing the final to Rhode Island was to expose another market to rugby. Benson said that the league “had an open bid process,” receiving “expressions of interest from 20-plus cities,” and that Pawtucket, RI, simply made the most sense.

“It’s all about getting into new places,” Benson told me. “We want to get into a market where we haven’t been. You want to expose new people to the sport…you’re building your audience, you’re building a fandom, you’re engaging new people from a business perspective and from a fan perspective.”

It is MLR’s objective of consistent growth over time that attracted Free Jacks co-founder Alex Magleby to the competition. Magleby played rugby, coached the USA men’s 7s and Dartmouth rugby, pioneered technology in the game, and served as USA Rugby Performance Director before helping establish the Free Jacks back in 2018.

“When I left USA Rugby, what really excited me about Major League Rugby was its structure,” Magleby told me at the championship weekend FanFest. “It was very much a central model that had a long-term vision.”

Magleby believes that aside from the ferocious action on the field, which will always attract people who seek sporting thrills, it is the human element and the fan experience that attracts new fans to rugby in the U.S.

“We can have fans come on the field after the game,” says Magleby. “That’s just the nature [of the league] because we have accessible players. So they’re going to sign autographs all night if they have to, because they love the kids and they’re highly accessible.”

The Free Jacks have signed partnerships with local craft breweries, and serve local food and have local DJs come play at their games. Even though they may have fans tuning in to watch them from the South Pacific to South Africa, the stadium experience is “hyper-local” according to Magleby.

There is a space for all demographics, from toddlers to grandmothers and everything in between. Magleby says, the Free Jacks focus on the experience because it’s what they can control. “The on-field product of rugby is beautiful and fantastic,” notes Magleby, “but it often requires us to bring people in in a way they weren’t suspecting.”

There is still some distance to cover before the U.S. men’s teams can compete consistently with the likes of New Zealand, South Africa, or England, but MLR is helping close the gap while creating a more talented player pool.

Stars in the twilight of their career, like Ma’a Nonu, Matt Giteau, and Andy Ellis, have all graced MLR fields, but slowly those names are being replaced with younger ones, many of them local. As the league continues to grow, salaries and the competition level have become high enough to attract players from rugby hotbeds.

Perhaps MLR’s biggest selling point is its on-field parody. Despite the Free Jacks winning three straight championships, every league match hangs in the balance until the 80th minute. “We didn’t know who was going to be in the playoffs and who was going to be hosting until the last game was played. That’s what you want,” says Benson.

With things beginning to move in the right direction, the age-old conversation in rugby circles has begun to resurface: Is the U.S. rugby’s sleeping giant?

With the 2028 Olympics in L.A., and the 2031 and 2033 men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups coming to American shores, progress remains necessary. Consistency of performance, consistent attendances, and consistent growth of the fanbase will be key to unlocking the American market and player pool.

Thanks to the creation of Women’s Elite Rugby (WER), there is now a credible talent pipeline for American women interested in rugby in the U.S. On the men’s side, MLR continues to build momentum and offer high-level playing opportunities in new locations.

“I think there’s no better way to grow a market than to have a team in that market,” says Benson. “It’s about creating critical mass for the sport. It’s about being in the right market, in the right building, with the right owner.”

With footprints on both coasts of the U.S. and along the southern rim, MLR is casting its gaze to areas like Northern California, the Mid-South, and the Upper Midwest for potential expansion, with an eye on a potential 20-team competition in the not-so-distant future.

Every new market opens up the possibility of a boy or girl picking up a rugby ball and falling in love with a sport that is looking to establish its position in the American sports pecking order.