Rugby is a game of constant and continuous motion. As a professional sport in America, however, it has been anything but that with roughly a half dozen failed attempts over the past two decades.
Can the Salt Lake-based startup, Major League Rugby, which kicks off its inaugural season later this month, be the one to buck the trend? Following Major League Soccer’s single-entity model, and thanks to multi-year broadcast deals with CBS Sports and ESPN, MLR officials believe they have found a winning game plan for turning what has been viewed as a niche sport into a commercially viable pro league.