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With the sadly inevitable news that the Utah Warriors have pulled themselves from the 2026 MLR season, the surprising factor was it took this long to hear they had to pull the plug.
When what became a cascade of clubs ceasing this summer started with NOLA Gold, RFC LA merging with San Diego Legion, Miami Sharks and then more recently Houston SaberCats. Utah Warriors were very vocal about the requirement for further investment to continue, and reading their statements, it looked like it was close but pulled at the final moment.
If read further between the lines they are only pulling club operations at the moment, with community and youth rugby continues. This offers a glimmer of hope for the future of rugby in America but with only 6 clubs remaining, how will that landscape look?
Another roughly 40 players, a few Internationals in there too, will now be looking for new clubs. Alongside the other 100 plus players already in the scouting pool from the other MLR clubs collapsing. This is another huge embarrassment for the country holding the 2031 RWC, and the World Rugby recent injection of $250 million to support the trajectory of rugby to that world stage in America.
World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin said, “We’re going to put $250 million-plus into everything from community rugby building, here with USA Rugby, through to social, digital building around the matches we’re bringing here. It’s not just about one-off matches in Washington or Chicago. It’s about building those audiences.”
With a statement like that from the CEO of World Rugby, has a couple of these clubs taken the step back to utilise the additional funding in the community game to then build more organically again? Potentially.
The demand for Rugby to become MASSIVE in the US is more driven from external countries than within at this stage, most people seem to think that USA will save the current cycle of Rugby and take it to NFL style stardom. But the appetite is clearly not there from a domestic stand point, America will not back any sport that they as a country are mediocre at. They want to be the best and will not settle for anything less.
Further sticky plasters over the cracks are being spouted with games from 6 Nations being played in the states to drum up support, but this will again infuriate a core group of fans in the Rugby World. If you move 6 Nations games from the nations to take on a Corporate tour to the states, then why is there so much backlash about R360 or other nations joining the 6 Nations?
6 clubs in the MLR cannot work with the geographical nature of the division all out of whack now, only 2 teams on the West Coast with California Legion (still not confirmed where they actually play from) and now the oldest club in the division, Seattle Seawolves. There is then 4 clubs on the East Coast, New England Free Jacks, DC Glory, Chicago Hounds & Anthem RC.
The travel and cost for these clubs will now be exponential. There will be a need to play each other 4 times to create a competitive league and then the off season. That will create 20 league games, then depending on how they will work the off season but assume it will be the top 4 play then have a final.
We then get into the stadium capacity for the clubs remaining,
Anthem RC - 10,500
Chicago Hounds - 20,000
New England Free Jacks - 5,000
Old Glory DC - 5,000
California Legion - Unknown
Seattle Seawolves - 4,500
With a league average of 5,000 attendance to each game last season, this is going to be seriously depleted further, as this will predominately be based on home fans due to the cost of travel apart from the die hard supporters.
Houston SaberCats recently pulled the club and stated they had lost more than $50 million over the 7 seasons they had. That gives a rough estimate of $7 million a year deficit on top of the running costs. With a $500,000 per club salary cap, but with loopholes on external finances. The average ticket price at the oldest club is $20-30 then obviously season tickets. Lets take the average price at $25, then a sell out every week at 4,500, and with a new 10 home games model. They would make $1.125 million a season in tickets alone, this would unlikely cover the salaries let alone any other costings.
Just off very crude numbers like this, the math just doesn’t math.
A complete overhaul is needed and quick but it doesn’t look likely. MLR have confirmed that the 2026 season will continue with 6 teams! I don’t think we will even get to the start of the season before we lose another club!