Rugby Comes To Washington DC Ahead Of 2031 And 2033 World Cups

“There is already loads of rugby in the U.S. – it’s just a bit of a well-kept secret. We need to make sure that secret is busted.”

Those were the words of World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin at World Rugby’s Host Cities Summit in Washington, D.C. on July 12th.

Hours before a riveting weekend of international rugby, which saw Scotland beat the USA Eagles at Audi Field, the All Blacks secure a series victory against England at Eden Park, and Ireland snatch victory in the dying seconds against the Springboks in Durban, Gilpin was on Capitol Hill presenting to representatives from over 30 American cities looking to host Rugby World Cup matches in 2031 and 2033.

World Rugby’s trip to Washington, D.C. coincided with the NATO Summit. But despite road closures and high temperatures (both political and meteorological), there was still ample attention on Gilpin and the rest of the World Rugby and USA Rugby presenters as they discussed rugby’s growth potential in the U.S.

The summit, which took place in the Nancy Pelosi Room of the U.S. Congressional building, had the backing of the congressional rugby caucus and invitees included members from the U.S. Department of State.

The Rugby World Cup is the third most widely-viewed international sports tournament after the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics and represents a north star around which the U.S. can look to grow American interest and participation in rugby union.

The Significance of the U.S. Sports Market

Rugby World Cups in 2031 and 2033 remain a distant prospect. Before then there is the small matter of rugby sevens at this summer’s Paris Olympics, the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in England, the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, followed by the 2027 Men’s World Rugby World Cup, the 2028 Olympics in L.A. and the 2029 Women’s Rugby World Cup. But World Rugby is keen to harness the lead-up to 2031, and ensure that the Rugby World Cups in the U.S. will be an economic success and breed a long-term rugby legacy in the States.

Gilpin did not understate the significance of the U.S. market for rugby, calling it “massive.” Despite rugby’s global nature, its traditional hotbeds are the U.K. and its former colonies, most notably South Africa and New Zealand. These markets are regional and often look inward at their own issues. Gilpin insists, “If we want the sport to be economically stable, growing, and thriving, we need the sport to be thriving in big markets, and there is no bigger market for sports and entertainment than the US.”

The challenge is finding the gap in the market and capitalizing on it. In a country so NFL, MLB and NBA-obsessed, even soccer, the world’s most popular sport, struggled to gain a foothold until relatively recently. And unlike soccer, rugby doesn’t have a Messi, or a Premier League that can multiply its viewership overnight.

Gilpin admits that rugby union won’t dominate the U.S. market, but insists it doesn’t need to. Between the game’s healthy following and its increasing participation numbers, especially among women, World Rugby sees enough interest to host its premier competitions in the U.S. and hopefully carve out a share of the media rights market.

According to Gilpin, World Rugby “modeled this a couple of years ago when we originally looked at the World Cup hosting, and we found that 1 percent of the sports rights market in the US would double rugby’s global economy. Those are pretty significant numbers.”

The numbers are undeniable:cracking the U.S. market could give rugby a new lease on life economically and allow it to expand development programs, offer more coaching and refereeing courses and help its national unions ensure their long-term futures.

USA Rugby CEO, Bill Goren, is equally excited about the investment in rugby in the U.S. With the Men’s Rugby World Cup just seven years away Goren sees an unprecedented opportunity. On the one hand, he sees the chance to align the budding but fragmented American rugby landscape in the U.S., and on the other he sees a collegiate system and nation famed for developing the best athletic talent in the world. Throw into the mix that many university club rugby endowments in the U.S. are equal to, or larger than the budgets of some national unions and Goren sees a recipe for success on and off the field.

Perception Versus Reality

It may shock Americans to know that rugby union has actually been played in the U.S. since the late 1800s. In 1871, Harvard University hosted McGill University at Jarvis Field in Cambridge, MA. The U.S. has even medaled in rugby at the Olympics, winning gold a century ago in Paris, and four years earlier (1920) in Antwerp.

Despite our own rugby history, the perception of rugby in the U.S. is that it is a foreign sport. Unlike the big five — football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and now soccer — rugby does not have a large collegiate footprint at the varsity level (only club level), and until 2017 it did not have a professional league.

Rugby can even be hard to watch in the U.S. Most major competitions, including Major League Rugby, are available in the U.S. on FloRugby, a lesser-known rugby-specific streaming service that costs $30 a month for a pro subscription. Rugby only appears on a major platform (NBC and Peacock) during the World Cup and for sevens tournaments. This forces diehard rugby fans to pay a premium to watch their sport and eliminates almost any possibility that casual fans or those who don’t yet know the sport will watch it.

Nate Ebner grew up in love with rugby, and despite playing for the USA rugby sevens team, he is best known for winning three Super Bowls as a special teams player for the New England Patriots. He recalls attempting to watch the Rugby World Cup back in the 1990s and having to find “random websites” just to watch the pinnacle event of his favorite sport. During his panel session on Capitol Hill he also noted that he turned to football in college because he saw no professional opportunities in rugby in the U.S. While there remains ample room for growth, Ebner looks at the current American rugby landscape and exclaims “it’s just a really exciting time.”

He is right to be enthusiastic. In less than a decade the U.S. will host two Rugby World Cups. More immediately, both the men’s and women’s USA Rugby Sevens teams have realistic opportunities to win medals at the Olympics, a sentiment repeated often during the Washington, D.C. event. If the U.S. were to medal, Ebner says he wouldn’t want to “put a limit on what that could mean for our sport.” In other words, Olympic success might just be the spark needed to propel rugby popularity in the U.S.

Rugby has been growing steadily in the U.S. for over half a decade now. Since 2017, Major League Rugby (MLR) has been a stable professional league that has helped propel American talent forward and has even recruited rugby legends like Ma’a Nonu and Matt Giteau to the U.S. Now, with the help of World Rugby, MLR franchise Anthem Rugby Carolina is being used as a talent pipeline specifically for young American players.

Women’s professional rugby is also poised to take off in the U.S. 2025 will be the inaugural season for the U.S’s first professional women’s league. Women’s Elite Rugby will offer American women the opportunity to ply their trade professionally without leaving the country. And all the data points to the fact that rugby is in fact popular in the U.S. even if the fanbase is fragmented across a large nation.

According to World Rugby’s presentation, the U.S. has the third largest player pool in the world with over 800,000 registered rugby players. It also has over 3,000 rugby clubs, roughly the same as the U.K. and has seen a 20% increase in fan interest between 2019 and 2023. Most notably, viewership of the Men’s Rugby World Cup was up 200% during last year’s tournament compared to 2015, and women’s rugby is the fastest growing girl’s/women’s sport in high school and college.

The question now is how to prepare the world’s biggest sports market and its talented athletes for its pinnacle events.

Growing Rugby in the U.S.

Alan Gilpin says that one of the biggest takeaways from the 2019 Men’s Rugby World Cup in Japan was that “in fact you can’t have too much time.” World Rugby still has seven years before they have to put on their pinnacle event in the U.S. but they have lots of work to do between now and then. As it stands, the U.S. as a nation may have the infrastructure to host the Rugby World Cup, but its teams do not have the quality to compete at the highest level and more interest needs to be fostered among casual fans, organizing committees and state and local governments.

Gilpin admits this is a challenge due to the competitive nature of the American sports and entertainment landscape, but it’s clear World Rugby is already thinking of the long-term legacy these tournaments can leave for the U.S. rugby public.

Goren meanwhile is working to align the rugby community in America and foster greater engagement with the sport. He feels all groups, “youth, high school, and major leagues are working to the same direction.” He says USA Rugby’s job is to make sure the rugby ecosystem feels supported, adding “it’s about us working more directly with them. Making sure they have proper grounds, proper championship events, proper rules, referees and coaches.”

Challenges and excitement await for rugby in the U.S., but the end goal is to put on two spectacular tournaments, fill the rugby coffers and ensure that participation in the sport shows healthy growth in the years to come. To that end, Goren says “we need to identify the markets and work to build them over the next seven years. Not just select a city, show up there seven years from now and say, ‘hey, here we are.’”

This is why the U.S. can expect more frequent elite test match rugby on its shores in the coming years. Washington, D.C. just played host to the USA vs Scotland last week. This Saturday, the All Blacks face Fiji at a sold-out SnapDragon Stadium (55,000 fans) in San Diego. The match brings rugby’s biggest brand to the U.S. for the first time since 2021 and emphasizes the desire to grow rugby’s presence in the American market. It also serves as a mouthwatering appetizer for the end of the MLR season which is in the quarterfinal stage at the time of writing.

Goren says “our goal is to have more events here on our grounds,” and he promised more marquee events across the nation for both the men’s and women’s teams. In 2031, when the first-ever Men’s Rugby World Cup in the U.S. is in full flow, fans will be able to look back on this moment and see how much effort was put in to make it all come together and carve out a high-profile spot in the U.S. sports landscape.