Major League Rugby

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Professional rugby union competition in the United States and Canada

Major League Rugby

Current season, competition or edition: 2024 Major League Rugby season
Sport	Rugby union
Founded	2017
First season	2018
Commissioner	Nic Benson[1]
No. of teams	12 (as of 2024 season)
Countries	United States (12 teams)
Headquarters	Dallas, Texas, United States
Confederation	RAN
Most recent champion(s)	New England Free Jacks (1st title)
Most titles	Seattle Seawolves (2 titles)
TV partner(s)	United States: Fox Sports (English) VIX (Spanish) International: The Rugby Network
Official website	majorleague.rugby

Major League Rugby (MLR)^[a] is a professional rugby union competition for clubs in North America. In the 2023 season it was contested by twelve teams: eleven from the United States and one from Canada.^[2] While operating outside of the governance and oversight of the national governing body, the league is officially sanctioned by USA Rugby—a member union of Rugby Americas North (RAN)—and is consequently part of World Rugby. The league was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

MLR began its first season in 2018 with seven teams. The league has since expanded, reaching an all-time high of 13 teams in the 2022 season.^[3] Twelve teams are competing in the 2024 season.

Major League Rugby implemented its first collegiate

youth academies.^[7][8]

History

Founding

See also: History of rugby union in the United States

In September 2016, with at least five amateur rugby union clubs across the United States discussing a possible professional league, Dean Howes,^[9] who had previously been an executive with Major League Soccer's Real Salt Lake and the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League, stepped in as senior strategic advisor for Rugby Utah in an attempt to provide a pathway for expanding professional rugby stateside.^[10]

By February 2017, a total of nine amateur rugby union organizations including the

Seattle Saracens, announced their intentions to form a professional league to begin play the following year.^[11][12]

On August 15, 2017, the Austin Huns announced that it would opt-out of MLR in favor of allowing a newly branded spinoff, the

Austin Elite compete in the league.^[13] The Houston Strikers rebranded themselves as the Houston SaberCats. Whereas the elite players of New Orleans, Utah, and Seattle became the New Orleans Gold, Utah Warriors, and Seattle Seawolves respectively, interests in Minneapolis were replaced by the San Diego Legion.^[14] With Kansas City and Dallas still in planning stages, the league continued as seven members for its inaugural season.^[15]

On November 6, 2017, Major League Rugby and CBS Sports Network announced a multi-year television partnership which marked MLR's first major television deal for broadcast rights.^[16] It was the first time in American history that a new sporting league had a national television deal prior to launch.^[17]

Early seasons and rapid expansion

The first regular-season game in Major League Rugby history was held on April 21, 2018, when the

Colorado Raptors

, with the Seawolves winning 23–19 to become the inaugural champions.

In addition to

Rugby ATL.^[18] With the opening of SaberCats Stadium

as Houston's permanent stadium in April 2019, MLR gained its first stadium that was specifically built for league play.

Later in April, RUNY announced the signing of French international Mathieu Bastareaud on a loan deal from Toulon for the 2020 season.^[19] In October 2019, another major signing was made when it was announced that All Blacks international and multiple World Cup winner Ma'a Nonu would join the San Diego Legion for the 2020 season.^[20] The following December saw another World Cup winner sign with the league, namely South Africa prop Tendai Mtawarira with Old Glory DC.^[21]

On March 12, 2020, MLR initially suspended its 2020 season for 30 days due to the coronavirus pandemic,^[22] but then cancelled the remainder of the entire season on March 18, after five rounds had been played.^[23]

The LA Giltinis began competition in the 2021 season, followed by the Dallas Jackals, who entered in the 2022 season.^[24][25][26]

At the end of the 2022 regular season, MLR announced that the Giltinis and the Gilgronis—both owned by Adam Gilchrist, co-founder of F45 Training—were disqualified from the playoffs due to a violation of league rules, allegedly including salary cap issues.^[27] At the time of their disqualification, the Giltinis and Gilgronis were ranked first and second in the western conference. Gilchrist filed suit against the league and the two teams were expelled from the league in October following a failed attempt to sell both teams.^[28]

The

USA Eagles as a competitive entity, before the USA-hosted 2031 Rugby World Cup.^[39]

Competition format

Major League Rugby spans five months from Late February through to Early July. The 2019 regular season was a double round-robin with all clubs playing each other home and away.^[18] Each team played sixteen games, half of them at home. This was followed by a postseason for the top four teams consisting of two semi-final matches and the Championship Game to determine the season's MLR champion team.^[40]

Since the 2020 season, MLR used a conference format.^[41] Both conferences, the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference, consisted of six teams (seven teams took part in the 2022 Western Conference). Each team playe a double round-robin within their conference, home and away, in addition to playing six games against teams from the other conference, for a total of 16 regular-season games.^[42]

The postseason consists of the top three teams from each conference: a wildcard game between the second and third ranked teams, followed by a playoff game between the wildcard winner and the first ranked team in the conference. The resulting playoff winners from each conference then face off in the championship final.

The league is structured as a closed system and, similar to other American sports leagues, does not have promotion and relegation.^[43] It operates as a single entity similar to Major League Soccer, with each team or "franchise" owned by the league and the franchise operators owning a share of the league.^[44]

Teams

Map

Los Angeles

Carolina

New England

DC

Chicago

Miami

Nuevo León (2025)

class=notpageimage|

Locations of Major League Rugby teams
          Current teams
         

Future teams

The Houston SaberCats, New Orleans Gold, San Diego Legion, Seattle Seawolves, and Utah Warriors have been a part of Major League Rugby since its founding in 2018. The New England Free Jacks, Old Glory DC, and Rugby FC Los Angeles (as Rugby ATL) joined in 2020; the Dallas Jackals joined in 2022; and the Chicago Hounds joined in 2023. The 2024 season includes two new clubs of the Miami Sharks and Anthem RC along with the relocated club Rugby FC Los Angeles, who had previously been Rugby ATL based in Atlanta.[45]^[46]

Overview of Major League Rugby teams

Club	Location	Stadium	Capacity	Joined	Coach	Broadcasters
Anthem RC	Charlotte, North Carolina	American Legion Memorial Stadium	10,500	2024	Alama Ieremia	TBA
Chicago Hounds	Bridgeview, Illinois	SeatGeek Stadium	20,000	2023	Sam Harris	Marquee Sports Network
Dallas Jackals	Arlington, Texas	Choctaw Stadium	48,000	2022	Agustin Cavalieri	KTXA
Houston SaberCats	Houston, Texas	SaberCats Stadium	4,000	2018	Pote Human	Space City Home Network
Miami Sharks	Fort Lauderdale, Florida	AutoNation Sports Field	5,000	2024	José Pellicena	TBA
New England Free Jacks	Quincy, Massachusetts	Veterans Memorial Stadium	5,000	2020[47]	Scott Mathie	NBC Sports Boston
New Orleans Gold	Metairie, Louisiana	Gold Mine on Airline[b]	10,000	2018	Cory Brown	YurView Louisiana
Old Glory DC	Germantown, Maryland	Maryland SoccerPlex	5,000	2020[49]	Simon Cross	Univision DC Monumental Sports Network
Rugby FC Los Angeles	Carson, California	Dignity Health Sports Park	27,000	2020	Stephen Brett	TBA
San Diego Legion	San Diego, California	Snapdragon Stadium[c]	35,000	2018	Danny Lee[51]	FOX 5 San Diego
Seattle Seawolves	Tukwila, Washington	Starfire Stadium[d]	4,500	2018	Allen Clarke	Univision Seattle Root Sports Northwest
Utah Warriors	Herriman, Utah	Zions Bank Stadium[e]	5,000	2018	Greg Cooper	KMYU

Timeline

Future teams

The expansion franchise fee is US$4 million as of 2019.^[54]

A team based in

On April 9, 2020, the Colorado Raptors announced that they would withdraw from Major League Rugby after three seasons in the league, effective May 2, 2020,[56] the first team to do so. Their announcement explained their withdrawal by saying that "our greater responsibility lies in the development of American players who can win the World Cup for the United States."^[56] Asked to explain how withdrawing from the league would help to develop American rugby players, the Raptors referred the question to Glendale City Manager Linda Cassaday, who said on April 10, 2020, that MLR had been founded with a core mission of developing American rugby players and originally had limited teams to three foreign players, although this expanded to five players before the first season began in 2018.^[56] MLR had expanded from seven teams in 2018 to 12 in 2020 without having enough American players to fill out rosters and had raised the ceiling on foreign players to 10 per team.^[56] The Raptors believed that both this overall number of foreign players and the higher proportion of foreign to American players no longer best served the goal of developing American players who could compete successfully in the Rugby World Cup, and therefore chose to withdraw from the league to better focus their efforts on the development of American players who could compete on an international stage.^[56]

On October 25, 2022, Major League Rugby announced that 12 teams would compete in the 2023 season, but that neither the Austin Gilgronis, nor the LA Giltinis will participate. With the uncertainties surrounding Austin and Los Angeles' team ownership, it was determined to suspend operations of the two teams to ensure a successful 2023 season, and protect the long-term strength and continued growth of the league.^[57]

On November 27, 2023, Major League Rugby announced that the Toronto Arrows would cease all operations, and not compete in the 2024 season.^[35] The Arrows had sought new funding following the death of their CEO, Bill Webb, but were unable to guarantee the new backers in time.^[36]

In December 2023, Major League Rugby announced that the

Major League Rugby players include those drawn from North American clubs, as well as foreign signings. Although the original concept was to limit club to three foreign players, the limit grew to five before the start of the first season, before then being increased to ten. This increased allotment of foreign players led to some criticism that MLR was not providing enough opportunities for American players to develop.[58]

Awards

MLR season

MLR championship

Television coverage

Major League Rugby programming runs in prime weekend time slots on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings.

The 2019 Championship game was broadcast on CBS, the first MLR game to be televised on free-to-air TV. It gained a 0.32 Sports TV rating which equated to 510,000 two-plus-person households.^[62]

Due to the

• San Diego Legion has a separate local rights agreement for their market with all the Legion's home-and-away MLR games that are not nationally televised being televised locally on Channel 4 YurView California.^[68]
• The Chicago Hounds began a television partnership with Marquee Sports Network beginning with the 2023 season.^[69]
• NBC Sports Philadelphia+ joined SNY in televising match coverage of eight remaining games.^[71]
• Toronto Arrows Rugby announced a television partnership with GameTV for the 2019 season. Between 2020 and 2023, Toronto Arrows games were available in Canada on TSN.
• Austin Elite Rugby partnered with Facebook Watch for their Texas-based viewers during the 2019 season.^{[citation needed}
  ]

MLR Weekly presented by Rugby Wrap Up is a weekly Major League Rugby magazine show featuring weekly highlights, previews and interviews with players, coaches and rugby personalities. The show is broadcast on American TV including Cox Communication's YurView Channel 4 in San Diego and Santa Barbara, and Channel 118 in Orange County and Palos Verdes, YurView California. YurView Arizona, YurView Vegas as well as Marquee Sports Network in Chicago.[72]

Previous television partners include AT&T, CBS, and ESPN.

On March 16, 2021, MLR launched The Rugby Network.[86] It is a free streaming platform in conjunction with RugbyPass which streams MLR matches and highlights. This digital network provides rugby fans with a single destination to stream select MLR matches, international rugby matches, game highlights, and other content.^[87]

MLR App

On March 17, 2021, MLR launched its official mobile app. This allows MLR fans to view MLR news, schedules, match scores, team profiles, statistics, and other video content. The app is part of a multi-platform deal with digital sport innovators

Attendance for the inaugural season was approximately 1,800 per match.[104] That average increased by about 300 per game in 2019 with an average of 2,133 per game and a total of 159,000 attendees.^[104] George Killebrew reported that in 2022 an additional 70,000 tickets were sold compared to the 2021 season, with crowd averages remaining around 2,000 per game.^[105]

Executives

Sponsorship

The Gem Garden in San Marcos, California, makes all MLR Championship rings, as of 2018.^[108]

On October 28, 2019, Major League Rugby announced that, starting for the 2020 season, Paladin Sports will be the new supplier of all uniforms/kit for the league.^[109] On November 1, 2023, MLR announced a 3-year partnership with Italian sportswear brand, Kappa, as the official kit partner of the league, beginning with the 2024 season.^[110]

On January 2, 2020, MLR partnered with Rhino Rugby for the 2020 season. Rhino Rugby is the official ball and technical training equipment supplier for the 2020 MLR season. The Rhino Rugby "Vortex Elite" ball is the official MLR match ball for all 12 teams. The Vortex Elite is currently the official ball of Rugby Europe, and Asia Rugby, and has been used in the Penn Mutual Collegiate Rugby Championship (CRC) the past several years^[111]

In March 2021, American Airlines became MLR's official airline and travel partner.^[112][113]

On February 23, 2023, MLR signed a partnership with

On October 6, 2023, MLR signed a partnership with Legends to lead sponsorship sales and commercial outreach.^[115]

On November 1, 2023, MLR announced a three-year agreement with Italian sportswear manufacturer, Kappa, to provide match kits, training kits, and fanwear support to all MLR teams.^[116]

See also

• United States Rugby Players Association
• Women's Premier League Rugby — Women's top competition in the U.S.
• PRO Rugby — a professional rugby competition in the U.S. that played only one season in 2016 before folding
• Super Rugby Americas — professional rugby competition played predominantly in South America, featuring teams from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the United States.
• Rugby union in the United States
• History of rugby union in the United States
• College rugby
• North American Rugby League (NARL)

Notes

References