Rugby In America with NFL Backing? - jb12780's Blog

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Rugby In America with NFL Backing?

Posted on May 19, 2013 at 08:48 PM.

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The National Football League (NFL) has officially entered the business of rugby. The NFL recently announced a formal partnership with the Premier Rugby League with the intention of creating a professional rugby league in the United States. The partnership�s first joint venture will be an exhibition game to be played at the New England Patriots Gillette Stadium and televised on the NFL Network this August between the London Irish and a �US Barbarians� all-star team, bringing current top international players together with talented young prospects from the states.

While the National Football League may be the most popular sport stateside, its rank globally pales in comparison to the likes of soccer, cricket and not surprisingly, rugby. Moreover, with the growing popularity of Rugby Sevens nationally, particularly at the collegiate level, and the inclusion of the sport in the 2016 Rio Olympics, many industry insiders see it as only a matter of time before rugby begins to make serious headway as the next viable professional league to compete with the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS.

As any good football coach will tell you that the best defense is a good offense, and from a business standpoint, the NFL�s move into the world of rugby follows the same strategy. By being a key investor in the the sport from its onset, the NFL assures itself the opportunity to manage the growth of rugby within the states and more specifically can insure that such growth does not come at a cost to the leagues own market share. Furthermore, an established professional rugby league offers the NFL an opportunity to extend its brand into a sport with numerous commonalities and that offers a number of synergies to the league�s already existing operational infrastructure and media assets.

According to Chris Lencheski, President of Front Row Marketing, a sports marketing agency behind several rugby events in the United States, �With NFL stadiums sitting largely empty during the spring and summer months, there is a tremendous opportunity to use a new national rugby league to fill unused seats and create fresh live content for the leagues network during the off-season. Expansion into rugby is in many ways the perfect extension of what the league is trying to accomplish from a business standpoint.�

This strategy is not unlike that undertaken by NFL owners during the 1970′s when investments were made in the North American Soccer League (NASL) with the primary intent of creating new opportunities for venue production. The NASL would later evolve into what is now Major League Soccer (MLS), and serves as a prime case study for what the NFL now appears ready to do with rugby.

Whether this summer�s rugby experiment actually leads to a newly founded professional league remains to be seen, but what is certain is that the National Football League continues to solidify itself as one of the most forward thinking and proactive business organizations in the world.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2013/05/17/nfl-plays-offensive-with-move-into-rugby/

Never in a million years did I see this coming, if it is true.