Super Rugby Pacific, LPGA Chevron Championship, and the ANZ Premiership are all in action this weekend as Newstalk ZB's Kate Wells and Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua preview what's to come. Video / NZ Herald
US President Joe Biden will write to World Rugby chairman Sir Bill Beaumont next week confirming his government's support for what he promises to be the biggest ever men's and women's Rugby World Cups.
Joe Biden meets All Blacks Jerome Kaino (right) and Charlie Faumuina on a visit to Auckland in 2016. Photo / Getty
Having entered a period of "exclusive targeted dialogue" with World Rugby last year, the United States's bid for the 2031 men's and 2033 women's World Cups is set to be approved at a council meeting on May 12.
Organisers are confident it will break the 2.7 million record attendance set by England's 2015 World Cup with NFL mega-stadiums belonging to the Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons and San Francisco 49ers committed to hosting games.
Packing out those stadiums would be a seminal moment for rugby union with the bids' backers drawing parallels with the impact the 1994 World Cup had on football in the US.
Biden, a distant cousin of former Ireland full-back Rob Kearney, is known to be a passionate rugby supporter and the bids have attracted cross-party support in Congress, which should guarantee federal funding.
"Joe Biden's administration is leading the charge to ensure that we meet the commitments to World Rugby that are required, along with a commitment from the president himself," Joe Brown, the chair of the US bid, told the UK's Telegraph Sport.
"A letter from the president is going to both Bill Beaumont and World Rugby in the next 10 days or so committed to full support of the event from the federal government."
Brown is well placed to make the comparison with the 1994 World Cup, having worked at that event. He also headed up the successful North American bid to host the 2026 football World Cup. Leveraging those contacts, Brown has persuaded more than 20 cities to commit to being possible host venues with their stadiums averaging 65,000-70,000 capacity.
Selling out those stadiums for a sport that is still on the fringes of the national consciousness is going to be an enormous challenge, even with a nine-year lead time. However, Brown believes giving the tournament the Super Bowl treatment, where matches are turned into events, will bring the US public around, as it did in 1994.
"There were a lot of people who had a lot of doubt that the United States could host a [football] World Cup first of all and second of all be able to fill all these huge stadiums," Brown said. "In fact the United States [in 1994] is still the largest spectator World Cup in history, even though it was still a 24-team tournament back then.
"Our view is to really sell the World Cup as a major event in the United States, which it deserves, and call it a mega event in some cases. We expect to be able to at least start with the vision of playing in these large NFL-type stadiums that will, I think, add a dimension to the Rugby World Cup that hasn't been seen before."
Selling tickets is only half the battle. Last October, the US men's team hosted New Zealand, drawing a crowd of more than 40,000 in Washington DC who witnessed a 104-14 thrashing. In some ways the result was not surprising given the All Blacks were at full strength and that the US had not played a match for two years. Regular access to top-class opposition, the lament of every tier-two side, is paramount to their ambition of being more than competitive hosts, according to Ross Young, the chief executive of USA Rugby.
"The San Francisco accord gives tier-two unions like us two tier-one games in a four year time," Young said. "How are you going to compete in a World Cup when that's your preparation? How do you drive commercial revenues to support that? So it's a conundrum, but having that North Star with a 10-year pathway with Men's and Women's World Cups coming here; that's a huge driver for us.
"Japan [in 2019] managed to unlock more opportunities by being a host, including high performance funding. We want to try and do the same."
The Black Ferns also stand to benefit from the US World Cup bid and have experience playing on turf such as Soldier Field in Chicago, in 2018. Photo / Photosport
Targeted investment may be transformative
World Rugby is looking at a targeted investment programme in the country over the next 10 years while getting the sport recognised by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which controls funding of college sports, would be transformative. Again, Young looks to football and how the 1999 women's World Cup, which the USA won as hosts, cemented soccer's place in the US sporting consciousness.
"There are so many lessons there," Young said. "Within the rankings of the women's games, we're always in the top four or five so it's almost a no brainer to use that success to drive things with the men's side of it following suit."
As much as the USA stands to benefit from hosting the tournament, rugby union itself stands to gain far more from cracking into the world's largest sporting marketplace. Young believes the television rights for the Six Nations will "grow exponentially" while Brown says the players themselves will have the opportunity to establish themselves as global superstars.
"The sport is really untapped on many levels," Brown said. "Right now the players are probably not known or well recognised here in the United States. From a market standpoint as soon as they can tap into the United States, their profile is going to explode."
