New England face Seattle in MLR final as US rugby seeks swift growth

OOn Thursday, the New England Free Jacks were escorted out of Quincy, Massachusetts, by the city policeRugby teams normally get such treatment after all that post-match socializing, but this was before the game, as the Major League Rugby champions headed to California to defend their title against the Seattle Seawolves.

From a team well-versed in the art of promoting itself and its sport, it was a fine piece of theatrics leading up to Sunday’s championship game. MLR General Manager Nic Benson also headed west.

“The owners of the San Diego team who are putting the game on are putting a lot of effort into it,” Benson told the Guardian. “It’s going to be a great event. Ticket sales are great. It looks like we’re going to do better than last year. [when around 10,000 saw the Free Jacks beat the San Diego Legion in Chicago]. We have a great window on Fox. So we’re excited.”

The venue, Snapdragon, is “a beautiful stadium,” Benson said. It has already been full once this year for rugby, the All Blacks and Fiji attract more fans than Manchester United this week for a friendly match against Real Betis.

Attracting local fans is part of the push, building on the Legion’s grassroots work and appealing to neutral viewers. It helps that Seattle and New England are two of the more successful MLR teams when it comes to putting people in seats, filling small stadiums week in and week out.

Benson said: “The challenge for both Seattle and New England is how to grow beyond that capacity. And that’s the problem you want to have as a sports team owner. And I know they’re both working on different ways to solve it.

“If you look at the whole competition, our average attendance has increased by about 40% since 2022. So that’s good… it’s up and down, but people are excited.”

MLR will complete its sixth season in seven years, 2020 having been canceled by Covid. It’s a moment of unusual visibility for American rugby, thanks to the Olympics – more on that later – but MLR has not always had it easy. Two championship teams, LA in 2021, New York in 2022, are no more. Other teams, two from rugby hot spots, Colorado and Atlanta, have also left the league.

Asked what he’s concerned about now, Benson said: “The same concern we’ve always had. We’re a challenger sport in the most competitive sports, entertainment and media market on the planet. So it’s really hard work to get local attention and the mindshare to build the consistency of the audience and the consistency of the media attention.”

It’s a “good sign,” Benson said, that the Dallas Jackals, winless in their first season, reached the Western finals this year. Another new team, the Chicago Hounds, lost to New England in the East.

A new team remained without a win. Anthem RC is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, a joint project with World Rugby, looking to provide playing time for American talent ahead of the 2031 World Cup on American soil.

“I would say the Anthem project is one of our biggest accomplishments this year,” Benson said. “But it has very little to do with what happened on the field.

“While I think they’ve gotten better and more competitive, it’s about the story of the 2031 World Cup coming up, creating that partnership with World Rugby around the development of American athletes. They’ve done things like with the Fijian Drua [in Super Rugby] but they’ve never done that with a private league before.

“Getting Anthem across the line was a really important sign of our intention to work together. We are here to build the ecosystem with World Rugby because we all benefit from it together.”

Benson spoke about ensuring Eagles coach Scott Lawrence “has access to the right players,” a process evident in the frustrating but not disheartening 42-7 loss to Scotland in Washington last month.

Asked if MLR could take inspiration from the U.S. women’s thrilling bronze medal at the Olympic sevens in Paris this week, Benson said: “First of all, it’s a women’s moment. They should have their moment.”

But he said: “We have to be evangelists for the game … so anything that gets a young boy or a young girl excited about the game, exploring the game, researching the game, finding out more, is great for me. I don’t care if you’re a women’s sevens fan or an All Blacks fan, if you’re a rugby fan in the United States, that’s a win. Ultimately you’re going to be an MLR fan.”

Benson hoped that the example of Olympic champion and social media star Ilona Maher would draw more kids to the rugby field to “develop some of those instincts that you need, especially in those key decision-making areas.”

In Sunday’s match, most of those spots will be filled by imports. The Free Jacks fly-half, Jayson Potroz, player of the match in last year’s final, is a New Zealander, long with Taranaki. Reece MacDonald is also a New Zealander, although the goalscoring fullback made his name in the Shute Shield club competition in Sydney.

For Seattle, Mack Mason, an Australian with Super Rugby experience for the New South Wales Waratahs, is the fly-half. His scrum-half, JP Smith, is a US international but was born in South Africa and played for a menagerie of his top teams, including the Blue Bulls, Free State Cheetahs and Eastern Province Elephants.

Still, from Seattle powerhouse Joe Taufete’e to Free Jacks mainstay Kaleb Geiger, a sort of mobile Colorado Rocky who didn’t know what rugby was Until a few years ago, the two finalists employed a major American talent.

“This year was our biggest national media package by quite a margin,” Benson said. “More games on FS1, more games on FS2. That’s clearly a really good window.”

A showcase, indeed. Now the big sale.