{"id":618436,"date":"2026-04-20T04:11:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T04:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/618436\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T04:11:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T04:11:20","slug":"world-rugby-chief-says-game-has-to-keep-growing-as-sport-eyes-u-s-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/618436\/","title":{"rendered":"World Rugby chief says game has to keep growing as sport eyes U.S. market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                                      Hong Kong \u2013 <\/p>\n<p>World Rugby chair Brett Robinson said that the sport &#8220;can&#8217;t sit still&#8221; if it wants to grow, including conquering the &#8220;challenge&#8221; that is the United States with the 2031 World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Rugby union&#8217;s place in global sports&#8217;\u00a0pecking order has come into sharp focus over issues such as financial sustainability, player welfare and threats to its popularity in traditional rugby heartlands.<\/p>\n<p>All Blacks great Michael Jones said\u00a0last week that rugby union is losing the battle for &#8220;hearts and minds&#8221; to rival code rugby league in New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong \u2013 World Rugby chair Brett Robinson said that the sport &#8220;can&#8217;t sit still&#8221; if it wants&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[299884,64,63,299885,760,85,12907],"class_list":{"0":"post-618436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-2031-rugby-world-cup","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-brett-robinson","12":"tag-rugby","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-world-rugby"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}