Rugby does not need to convince America to love sports. It needs to show American athletes that they can play it — and football fans that they already understand more of it than they think.
Whenever the conversation turns toward growing rugby in the United States, the same question eventually appears: Who exactly are we trying to reach?
Should rugby market itself to existing sports fans? Parents? College students? Immigrant communities that already understand the game? Or young athletes who may have never watched a rugby match in their lives?
The answer, of course, is that rugby needs all of them.
But they should not all be treated as equal priorities.
If rugby wants to move beyond being a niche sport in the United States, its primary marketing strategy should revolve around two groups: young athletes looking for somewhere to compete and American football fans looking for something else to watch.
Those two audiences offer rugby something enormously valuable.
Familiarity.
American sports culture does not need to be created. It already exists on an enormous scale. More than 8.4 million students participated in high school sports during the 2025-26 school year, another national record.
The opportunity for rugby is not convincing Americans that sports matter.
It is convincing them that rugby belongs within that culture.
Sell Rugby as an Opportunity
The most important audience for American rugby may not be rugby supporters at all.
It may be the 14-year-old football player who is buried on the depth chart.
The wrestler looking for another sport.
The soccer player who loves contact.
The basketball player who is powerful but slightly undersized for the next level.
The track athlete who can run all day.
The athlete who finished their high school season and suddenly realized that their competitive career might be ending.
Those are rugby players who simply haven’t discovered rugby yet.
American youth sports are incredibly competitive. Football alone remains enormous. More than one million boys played 11-player high school football during the 2024-25 school year.
But only a fraction of those athletes are going to play college football.
An even smaller percentage will reach the NFL.
That doesn’t mean their athletic ability disappears.
Rugby should present itself as another path.
Not necessarily a replacement for football, basketball, soccer, wrestling or track, but another place where the abilities developed in those sports have value.
A linebacker already understands tackling angles.
A running back understands space.
A wrestler understands leverage.
A soccer player understands passing into space and maintaining shape.
A basketball player understands support lines and creating numerical advantages.
A sprinter understands acceleration.
Rugby takes pieces of skills American athletes already possess and puts them together in a sport many of those athletes have never seriously considered playing.
That should be one of the central messages of rugby marketing in America:
You already have some of the tools. Come see what you can do with them.
Rugby Needs to Be Where the Athletes Are
There is sometimes a tendency within rugby to believe that people need to discover the sport first and then decide to play it.
In America, the process may need to work the other way around.
Get the ball into someone’s hands.
Let them run.
Let them tackle.
Let them experience a training session.
Then teach them why the sport matters.
Youth clinics connected to professional clubs, national-team matches and college programs should become a routine part of major rugby events. High school coaches from football, wrestling, soccer and track should know where the nearest rugby program is. Rugby clubs should actively recruit athletes whose traditional sports seasons have ended.
The objective shouldn’t be to stand outside a football stadium telling kids that rugby is better than football.
That argument accomplishes nothing.
The message should be:
You love football? Great. Here’s another sport you might be really good at.
That is a much easier conversation.
It also gives American rugby an enormous talent pool from which to build.
Parents Matter — But Market the Opportunity
Parents unquestionably have to be part of the equation because they are often the people deciding whether their children can participate.
But marketing rugby exclusively to parents risks framing the sport around parental concerns rather than the experience of playing it.
The better approach is to sell parents on opportunity.
Talk about teamwork.
Talk about fitness.
Talk about friendships and community.
Talk about college rugby.
Talk about opportunities to travel.
Talk about national-team pathways.
Explain player-welfare standards clearly rather than avoiding conversations about contact.
And most importantly, show parents what an organized, well-coached rugby environment actually looks like.
Parents are the gatekeepers.
The athletes are the customers.
Rugby needs to speak effectively to both.
Then Go After Football Fans
There is another enormous audience sitting directly in front of American rugby.
Football fans.
Rugby should stop treating football’s popularity as something it has to compete against.
It should use it.
Someone who understands a goal-line stand, field position, tackling, kicking for territory and the importance of winning possession is already halfway toward understanding rugby.
The terminology changes.
The structure changes.
There are no downs.
There are no forward passes.
There isn’t a commercial break every few minutes.
But the fundamental attraction of physical territory-based competition is very familiar.
That familiarity should be the bridge.
Instead of marketing rugby as an exotic international sport Americans need to learn, market it as something recognizable with a completely different rhythm.
Imagine telling an NFL fan:
You still get tackles.
You still get collisions.
You still get goal-line stands.
You still get kicking battles.
You still get explosive runners trying to break through defenders.
Except the ball rarely stops moving.
That is a much stronger sales pitch than handing someone a rulebook explaining rucks, mauls and scrum penalties.
Rugby Can Fill Football’s Empty Spaces
Perhaps the biggest opportunity is not convincing football fans to choose rugby instead of football.
It is convincing them to choose rugby when football isn’t on.
The NFL dominates American Sundays. College football owns Saturdays throughout the fall. High school football controls Friday nights in thousands of communities.
Trying to fight those institutions directly would be foolish.
So don’t.
Build around them.
Summer rugby can give football fans something physical and competitive to watch when they are waiting for training camp.
International rugby can become appointment viewing during windows where American football is quieter.
Professional rugby can target markets and kickoff times where it isn’t asking spectators to choose between their rugby club and their NFL team.
The proposition doesn’t have to be rugby versus football.
It can be football and rugby.
That distinction matters.
College Students and Rugby Communities Still Matter
College students remain an important audience because universities are one of the places where Americans frequently encounter rugby for the first time.
The college club system introduces thousands of people to the sport, creates lifelong supporters and provides rugby with ready-made communities on campuses around the country.
Immigrant communities are equally important.
People from South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, England, France, Argentina and other rugby nations have helped sustain the sport in the United States for generations.
They provide knowledge, coaching, traditions and an existing fan base.
Rugby should continue embracing those communities.
But they cannot represent the entire growth strategy.
If rugby’s ambition is to become a significant American sport, eventually Americans with no family connection to rugby need to consider the game theirs too.
The kid from Ohio who grew up watching the Browns.
The wrestler from Pennsylvania.
The receiver from Georgia.
The basketball player from New York.
The soccer player from California.
The girl who started playing flag football and discovers she loves carrying a ball through contact.
Those are potential rugby players.
And their families are potential rugby supporters.
2031 Gives American Rugby a Deadline
There is also now a clock ticking.
The United States will host the Men’s Rugby World Cup in 2031, followed by the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2033.
World Rugby’s current six-year strategy culminates in the 2031 tournament, and the governing body has announced plans for approximately £200 million in investment in the United States leading into the event.
That makes the next five years enormously important.
The World Cup itself will generate attention.
Stars will arrive.
Stadiums will fill.
Television coverage will increase.
Sponsors will appear.
People who have never watched rugby will become curious.
But a successful World Cup cannot simply be measured by attendance.
The real question should be what happens afterward.
How many kids who watch the tournament ask their parents where they can play?
How many football supporters decide to keep watching rugby?
How many high schools add teams?
How many college programs grow?
How many people who attend their first rugby match in 2031 attend another one in 2032?
That foundation has to be built before the World Cup arrives.
Don’t Sell Americans Rugby. Let Them Discover That Rugby Is Already for Them.
American rugby sometimes makes the sport sound more complicated than it needs to be.
We explain the traditions.
We explain the terminology.
We explain the laws.
We explain why rugby is different.
Maybe the first conversation should be simpler.
Give young athletes a ball and tell them there is another game they can play.
Show football fans a massive tackle followed immediately by the ball moving wide.
Show a running back a winger breaking into open space.
Show a linebacker a flanker.
Show a wrestler a breakdown.
Show a quarterback a fly-half manipulating a defense.
Let Americans find the familiar pieces first.
The deeper appreciation will come later.
Rugby’s greatest marketing opportunity in the United States isn’t convincing millions of people to abandon the sports they already love.
It is showing them that there is room for one more.
For the young athlete, rugby can be another place to compete.
For the football fan, rugby can be another game worth watching.
And if American rugby can successfully connect those two ideas, the audience it has spent decades looking for may have been standing in front of it the entire time.
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