FIFA\u2019s Club World Cup bombed spectacularly in America, and World Rugby should take note. Stadiums averaging just 52% capacity, despite promises of sellouts, should be a massive wake-up call for the 2031 Rugby World Cup. With the first Rugby World Cup in a country that isn\u2019t mad about rugby approaching, World Rugby needs a complete marketing revolution.<\/p>\n
The American sports marketing playbook<\/p>\n
Americans respond to one thing: spectacle. If you\u2019re not making jaws drop, you\u2019re wasting everyone\u2019s time. The Club World Cup struggled because it treated Americans like they owed football something. They don\u2019t. Rugby needs to earn every eyeball by being undeniably, impossibly entertaining.<\/p>\n
Forget everything World Rugby knows about traditional marketing \u2014 \u201cthe gentleman\u2019s game,\u201d the \u201cvalues\u201d chat, the focus on teamwork and respect. When it comes to marketing sports, Americans have a completely different playbook.<\/p>\n
Find rugby\u2019s Jonah Lomu first<\/p>\n
To make rugby talkable in the U.S., it needs a \u201cJonah Lomu.\u201d During his era, he became the most recognisable rugby player in the world, and this even filtered into the American media. At 6\u20325\u2033 and 18 stone (252 lbs.), running like a sprinter, he was everything Americans understand: bigger, faster, stronger.<\/p>\n
Look at the Six Nations stars that rugby showcased on Netflix\u2019s \u201cSix Nations: Full Contact\u201d: Finn Russell (5\u203210\u2033, 176.3 lbs.), Marcus Smith (5\u20328\u2033, 165.3 lbs.), Stephen Varney (5\u20327\u2033, 158.7 lbs.). These are good rugby players, but they look like accountants next to American athletes. Compare Russell to NFL quarterbacks like Josh Allen (6\u20325\u2033, 238 lbs.) or NBA stars like LeBron James (6\u20329\u2033, 113kg).<\/p>\n
Americans want stars who look like they were built in a laboratory \u2014 think The Rock meets Usain Bolt. They need a player so physically imposing that even casual sports fans stop channel-surfing when they see him. That\u2019s the kind of athlete that gets the attention of Americans.<\/p>\n
My recommendations for cracking America<\/p>\n
Find the freaks of nature: Rugby needs to identify and promote its most physically impressive specimens. Who\u2019s the fastest? Who hits hardest? Who\u2019s built like a Greek god? American sports marketing is simple \u2014 find the genetic anomalies and make them household names. LeBron James isn\u2019t just good at basketball; he\u2019s a 6\u20329\u2033 athletic freak who moves like a dancer. Rugby needs to find its freaks and sell them accordingly.<\/p>\n
Use the Olympic formula: Watch American Olympic TV coverage, and you\u2019ll see the blueprint. Every athlete gets the full treatment \u2014 dramatic backstory, physical stats, slow-motion highlights showcasing superhuman abilities. NBC doesn\u2019t just show you a swimmer; they show you a 6\u20324\u2033 machine who overcame adversity and can move through water like a torpedo. Rugby needs that same approach \u2014 find the genetic freaks and sell their stories.<\/p>\n
Sell the story, not just the sport: Americans adore rags-to-riches narratives, and rugby actually has plenty. Find the Pacific Islander who went from poverty to international stardom, the South African who escaped apartheid through rugby, the English farm boy who became a giant. Package these stories with the same emotional intensity as Olympic coverage \u2014 slow-motion training montages, family interviews, dramatic music. Make people care about the person before they care about the sport.<\/p>\n
Go digital-first with proper stars: Traditional media won\u2019t work \u2014 rugby fans are half as likely to read newspapers or listen to radio. Netflix\u2019s Formula 1 success proves documentaries can build American audiences \u2014 34% of F1 viewers became fans after watching \u201cDrive to Survive.\u201d But rugby\u2019s Netflix attempts featured players who barely looked like athletes when Americans expect bigger, faster, more physical specimens.<\/p>\n
Embrace social media comparisons: Create funny, shareable content comparing rugby to NFL and college football. Show rugby\u2019s nonstop physicality versus American sports\u2019 endless timeouts. Highlight the endurance, the real contact, the fact that play doesn\u2019t stop every 30 seconds.<\/p>\n
Target the right audience: Research shows just 2.8 million Americans actually follow rugby. The real audience is young, male and educated. 32% are age 18-24, they\u2019re heavy social media users, and they\u2019re five times more likely to second-screen during games. They\u2019re also NBA fans (27%), MLB fans (24%) and NHL fans (19%). Focus on the 800,000 existing players and 3,100 clubs as your foundation \u2014 these communities will travel and create atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Partner with crossover sports: The explosion in women\u2019s sports and diverse athlete representation shows there\u2019s appetite for \u201cunderdog\u201d sports stories. Position rugby as the next frontier.<\/p>\n
Venue strategy: Pick 30,000-capacity MLS stadiums over prestigious NFL venues. A packed Red Bull Arena beats a half-empty MetLife Stadium every single time. Picture 22,000 people rattling around in an 84,000-seat venue in Dallas \u2014 the optics will be catastrophic.<\/p>\n
Grassroots opportunity: 57% of rugby players globally are pre-teen, with 24% being girls. The tournament could be a massive catalyst for American rugby if handled properly. Partner with colleges, offer youth programmes and make it accessible to curious Americans who might discover they love the sport.<\/p>\n
Reality management: Talk about \u201cintroducing rugby to America\u201d and \u201cgrowing the game\u201d rather than promising sellouts. When you inevitably get decent crowds, it\u2019ll look like success. France created local interest for matches between complete unknowns \u2014 that\u2019s the gold standard to achieve.<\/p>\n
The bottom line<\/p>\n
The 2031 Rugby World Cup isn\u2019t just another tournament \u2014 it\u2019s rugby\u2019s one shot at cracking the world\u2019s most lucrative sports market. Get it right, and rugby gains 330 million potential new fans. Get it wrong, and the sport remains forever locked out of American consciousness.<\/p>\n
Rugby has the raw ingredients America craves: authentic athleticism, nonstop action, and stories of triumph that put Hollywood to shame. What it lacks is the marketing sophistication to package these assets for American consumption. While FIFA fumbles with half-empty stadiums, World Rugby has the chance to learn from football\u2019s mistakes and show Americans something genuinely spectacular.<\/p>\n
The formula is simple: Find the genetic freaks, tell their stories like movies, and sell rugby as the most physically demanding sport on earth. Americans will pay attention to superhuman athletes doing impossible things. Give them rugby\u2019s version of LeBron James, and they\u2019ll fill stadiums to watch him play a sport they\u2019ve never seen before.<\/p>\n
The clock is ticking. 2031 is rugby\u2019s moment to either break America or prove it\u2019s not ready for prime time.<\/p>\n
Joshua Van Raalte is CEO of Brazil Communications in London and a consultant to the rugby industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIFA\u2019s Club World Cup bombed spectacularly in America, and World Rugby should take note. Stadiums averaging just 52%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-78114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78114","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=78114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}