One of the most mentioned talking points within rugby media circles around the world has been how rugby can “break” the US market. Talking heads have spoken about everything from bringing more high profile matches stateside to even basing a Super Rugby team in Southern California or Hawaii (no, really those were serious conversations), but one of the less talked about breaking tools is something that is attached to all US sports leagues. Something that allows fans to feel more invested in their sports. Something that helps people go from knowing nothing to being able to discuss tactics, stats and individual players in a relatively short amount of time. Something like… fantasy! To be more US centric, I’m talking about Fantasy Major League Rugby (MLR).

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that fantasy and rugby haven’t merged together before. 2015 is when I really started to follow rugby, instead of just playing it, and ESPN Scrum had a 2015 Rugby World Cup Fantasy. The 2023 Rugby World Cup came out with an official fantasy app. During the time of this writing SuperBru offers fantasy for the Investec Champions Cup, Gallagher Premiership, Men’s 6 Nations and the United Rugby Championship. All of these are great for people who know about these competitions or are from those countries, but those don’t really help get the non-rugby people here in the US involved. Sure the rugby community can try to push our sports fanatic friends into joining a fantasy league for one of these competitions, but more likely than not they won’t care because they’re not going to feel a connection to teams from Wales or South Africa.

That’s where Fantasy MLR comes in. Americans like American competitions. When they see names like New York… Atlanta… Austin… Dallas…Toronto… Seattle? Yeah! Seattle or New England or Houston, these are names that they can connect with, and therefore making it an easier sell. Now that we have the American connection, we just need to go over the fantasy for it. The two ways I know of to play Fantasy MLR are through The Fantasy Ruckers and Oval3.

Oval3 is an interesting one. You make your team by collecting, buying or trading NFT cards. Each player has a common, limited, rare, super rare and unique card, and there’s only a certain number of each card. I’m pretty sure players get some kind of royalties from the cards; which is pretty cool because we all know they’re not getting paid much to play in the MLR.

I’m more partial to The Fantasy Ruckers one because it is a more traditional fantasy model  in which most Americans would recognize. There’s a draft where everyone takes turns picking players in a snake draft format. You draft one player for each category: front row, second row, back row, forward flex, scrumhalf, flyhalf, center, back three, back flex, and a bonus point team (instead of picking a defense like you would in Fantasy NFL) who gives you points based on set pieces and if they get either a losing or four try bonus point. In between rounds there are waiver wires where you can bid on free agents using your Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB). After the waiver wire period is over all remaining free agents are up for grabs in a first come first serve format to replace the people you just spent FAAB on who inevitably go missing on that week’s match day 23 team sheets.

The Fantasy Ruckers was created by brothers Ryan and Matt Ye and their friend Devin “Vandy” Vandepoele back in 2022. Back then the amount of stats they had available to them was very limited, and they had to calculate everything by hand and on excel spreadsheets, and only had one eight person league. Since then, more stats have been made available to the Supreme Commissioner (the self appointed title of Ryan Ye) allowing Fantasy MLR to get closer to being on-par with the fantasy leagues of the other American sports leagues. In addition, thanks to one of their league members (Oddball Gentleman we are in your debt!) they now have a fancy website, which allows them to have multiple leagues with both free and paid leagues available! Even though more leagues have been added, the “OG” league remains.

Some of the names associated with the OG league are quite recognizable within the North American rugby landscape. People like Bill Baker of Eagles Overseas, John Fitzpatrick of Rugby Morning, Derek Bressette of Le Rouge Rugby Podcast and Matt McCarthy of Rugby Wrap Up all compete (along with others)  in that league. James Deeley of MLR Stats and NA Rugby Database was part of the OG league during the first season, but has since stepped aside to focus on these current ventures. He is still part of the community, though. Fellow Rugby Rant Podcast blog writer Rick Collins also takes part in a fantasy league with myself. John “Ranger” Payne of Ranger Picks also takes part in a fantasy league. This season may also see Gift Egbelu of Rugby Swag Show join the fray (at least he told me he was going to). Oddball Gentleman (otherwise known as Alistair Kirsch-Poole) also co-hosts with John Fitzpatrick on The Glorious Rugby Podcast, and writes the blogs for Glorious Rugby.

Throughout their fantastical journey, the trio of creators have documented everything via their podcast, and created a whole community for everyone to interact with each other thanks to their discord channel. The banter on there between those in the know and those pretending to know anything (cough, cough me cough, cough) is worth joining in of itself.

You may be asking yourself, that’s great and all but how does this help grow the best sport in the world in the US? Well in order to bring it back to our topic all we have to do is look at the hosts. Vandy knew just about nothing about rugby when they started this back in 2022. With just a few seasons of fantasy under his belt, you can now listen to him on their show making coherent analysis of the play on the pitch, he can name off players on each team, and can actually make good detailed arguments for why one player is more valuable to a team than another.

What’s that you say? One example of a guy who still can’t manage to make it to the playoffs doesn’t prove my point? That’s fair. I’ll just have to provide a few more. Perhaps my wife is a good example. Again, someone who only knew of rugby because I relentlessly bring it up in our daily lives for no reason (sorry baba), but now she can actually recognize names on team sheets. She has vested interest in matches now. We can even have real debates over a team’s player selections now. That’s just after one season, too.

If that’s not enough for you (is anything going to be enough for you?) I actually have more examples. In my fantasy league last year there were not one, but two new-to-rugby people. In the first year of letting the general public try their version of fantasy rugby, they had at least two new converts! Hopefully the trend continues this year with more new people joining.

With how large fantasy sports are here in the US, I truly believe that it is one of the best ways to help get the general sporting public to fall in love with rugby. I’m constantly trying to get more people I know to join in on the agonizingly, horrific, great time that is Fantasy MLR, and now it’s your turn. Maybe you’re like me and have a spouse/partner you’ve been trying for years to get into rugby. Here’s your chance to convert them just like I’m in the process of doing! Just follow this link and fill out the form. I’m looking forward to reading your banter in the discord soon!