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Rugby League as a Televised Product in the United States of Rugby League as a Televised Product in the United States of
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Mike Morris
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1
Rugby League as a Televised Product in the United States of America
By Mike Morris
Abstract
Rugby league is a form of rugby that is more similar to American football than its more
globally popular cousin rugby union. This similarity to the United States of America’s most
popular sport, that country’s appetite for sport, and its previous acceptance of foreign sports
products makes rugby league an attractive product for American media outlets to present and
promote.
Rugby league’s history as a working-class sport in England and Australia will appeal to
American consumers hungry for grit and authenticity from their favorite athletes and teams.
Established coverage of English soccer has paved the way for rugby league media in the United
States and has been used as a blueprint for the ideas in this paper. This paper outlines rugby
league’s history, cultural parameters, and marketability, and presents multiple media outlets and
possible carriers, before settling on Sinclair Broadcast Group as an ideal rights-holder.
Special thanks to the project’s faculty committee: Professor John Shrader; the
committee’s chair, Dr. Frauke Hachtmann, and Professor Joseph Weber for all their help and
guidance along the way.
Introduction and Rules
When many Americans hear the word “rugby” they may simply think of large men
chasing an oval around a field with no rhyme nor reason, a simple bacchanal of violence with no
discernable nuance to it. If they are aware of any details of gameplay, they are likely thinking of
rugby union. Rugby union is the larger and more popular code, or type, of rugby football. It is
2
played with 15 players to a side, no limits on possession, and boasts names such as South
Africa’s Springboks and New Zealand’s All Blacks among its international sides.
But rugby union is not the only code of rugby football. The 13-man code is called rugby
league, the main competitions of which are the England-based
1
Super League and the Australian-
based National Rugby League (NRL.) Both conduct their seasons in the northern hemisphere’s
summer months. While rugby union allows players to be tackled as many times as is necessary
for advancement of the ball, in rugby league, each team is allowed only six tackles per
possession. If a team cannot convert a try before its ball carrier is tackled for a sixth time,
possession turns over to the other team.
The BBC explains the rules in more detail:
“The aim of the game is simple: score more points than the other team. Each team is given six
tackles or chances to score. If, after six tackles, they have not scored, the ball is handed over to
the other team who then get the chance to score with their six tackles. But rugby league is
slightly more complicated than this. A game of rugby league consists of two halves of 40
minutes, with injury time added on at the end of each half. In between the two halves, there is a
10-minute break after which both teams change ends and attack the half they were defending.
(BBC Sport, 2005).”
Rugby league is in prime position for expansion of its consumer base outside of its
traditional heartland. The United States’ appetite for sport, its preparedness to accept foreign
sport as a top product, and rugby league’s summer playing season makes the U.S. a prime market
for the game to break new ground in.
1
A note: while the geopolitical entity is the United Kingdom, the home nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and
Northern Ireland have a long history of competing separately in sport. Rugby league, for its part, was invented in
northern England, and its popularity in the northern hemisphere remains mostly confined to specific areas of
northern England. Super League and the second-tier Championship have one French-based club each, while Super
League has a club in Toronto, Canada and the Championship has a club in London. All other clubs in both divisions
are based in the north of England, so this paper will often use “England” or “English” where “UK,” “Britain,” or
“British” would normally seem more appropriate.
3
Origins of Rugby Football and Its Eventual Split
Rugby union is the older code, and rugby league was established by players disgruntled
with the established order in the Rugby Football Union, the governing body of rugby union in
England, which still governs the game in that country today.
The historical divide between rugby union and rugby league illustrates the class
differences between the games that are evident in England to this day.
Rugby union’s history is said to start with William Webb Ellis, but its origins are
shrouded in legend to the point that it cannot be said for certain what is true and what is
apocryphal, like the story about George Washington and the cherry tree.
In short, Ellis is said to have invented rugby at the Rugby School, an English boarding
school, after picking up the ball during a game of football, thus paving the way for a new sport.
A plaque at Rugby School memorializes Ellis and his supposed innovation:
“This Stone commemorates The Exploit Of William Webb Ellis Who With A Fine Disregard For
The Rules Of Football, As Played In His Time, First Took The Ball In His Arms & Ran With It,
Thus Originating The Distinctive Feature Of The Rugby Game A.D. 1823 (Baker 1981, 118).”
Baker explains it’s not quite that simple: “Like most myths, this disarmingly simple
account of the origin of Rugby football is based on a kernel of fact: William Webb Ellis was
indeed a football enthusiast during his days at Rugby School, 1816-1825 (Baker 1981, 118).”
Baker continues: “The Ellis myth over-simplified the truth. Hardly the product of a
single, isolated feat of a nonconformist individual, Rugby football emerged from a complex
social and educational matrix which featured a unique blend of authority and freedom,
institutional pride and individual initiative (Baker 1981, 118).”
Some Rugby School alumni would later assert that rugby was simply a continuation of a
game that had been played in England for years. Matthew Holebeche Bloxam, an author and
4
Rugby School alumnus, denied that the game was ever played while he was in school before
finally becoming enamored with the Ellis story, reasoning that it must have happened after he
left school (Baker 1981, 119).
A committee of Rugby School alumni put out an “official history” of the game in 1897,
centered around Bloxam’s Ellis story and citing letters from a T. Harris. But even still, Harris did
not cite the Ellis story as fact:
“More to the point of the sub-committee's interest, however, were two letters from an
octogenarian, T. Harris, who was a younger contemporary of William Webb Ellis at Rugby.
Harris recalled that Ellis ‘was an admirable cricketer, but was generally regarded as inclined to
take unfair advantages at football. . . It may be that his practice of running with the ball, which
Mr. Matthew Bloxam speaks of as having been invented by him, was the point objected to.’ Yet
Harris, too, had to admit to hearsay: ‘I was several years [Ellis's] junior, and had not either
reasons or opportunities for closely observing his manner of play. (Baker 1981, 120-121).’”
With this, Rugby School had controlled the narrative. The man, the myth, and the legend
were inscribed in history: that William Webb Ellis was the first to handle the ball, that his
innovation was controversial at first, and that it was accepted by the 1830s as a key part of the
game (Baker 1981, 121).
Rugby league’s origins, on the other hand, are less concealed in both myth and the
English public schools, which, contrary to the American usage of the term, is where the sons of
the wealthy are educated.
Once rugby union had been codified, it maintained a strict amateur ethos, with
professionalism forbidden. This persisted well into the 20
th
century, but working-class players in
the north of England couldn’t last that long. From the National Rugby League, Australia’s
premier rugby league competition:
“Rugby league began in 1895, as the 'Northern Union', when clubs in the North of
England broke away from the RFU. The clubs wanted to compensate their working-class players
for time away from work for rugby tours and injuries.
5
The RFU refused, saying 'if men couldn't afford to play, then they shouldn't play at all'. In the
decade that followed, rugby league made changes setting itself apart from rugby union (National
Rugby League, n.d.a).”
The northerners’ split was taken as a perversion of the amateur spirit the game was
founded in, but for decades after, league’s professionalism served as a siren song to amateur
union players, especially in Wales, where, unlike in England, the working class was a key rugby
union constituency.
Although Welsh rugby union player Phil Bennett was offered £35,000 to play for English
rugby league club St Helens R.F.C., Welsh players who moved to rugby league were ostracized
from their previous community: “There was also the knowledge that once a player had
committed the crime of switching rugby "codes" by joining a professional rugby league team in
the north of England, he would never be allowed to play for Wales or a Welsh club again (Johnes
2008, 139).
From its very birth, rugby league was tied indelibly with working class identity and the
industrial heartland of northern England from which it came.
Rugby League Competition Structures in England and Australia
Super League, founded in 1996, is the top-flight of England’s rugby league competition
hierarchy, which operates on a system of promotion and relegation between the levels similar to
that seen in soccer leagues around the world.
Currently, 12 clubs compete in Super League: Castleford Tigers, Catalans Dragons
2
,
Huddersfield Giants, Hull F.C., Hull Kingston Rovers, Leeds Rhinos, Salford Red Devils, St
Helens, Toronto Wolfpack
3
, Wakefield Trinity, Warrington Wolves, and Wigan Warriors (Super
League, n.d.).
2
Based in France
3
Based in Canada
6
The top three divisions of English rugby league are Super League, the Championship,
and League 1, which operate in descending order through a system of promotion and relegation,
where successful teams move up the hierarchy and unsuccessful teams are demoted.
Super League, the top tier, plays a 29-game regular season where each of the league’s 12
teams play each other twice, plus seven additional matches including a “Magic Weekend,” where
an entire round of matches is played at a special venue (Rugby Football League, n.d.):
The second-tier Championship consists of 14 teams, who play each other twice and
participate in the Summer Bash, an annual event similar to Super League’s Magic Weekend
(Rugby Football League, n.d.):
7
Finally, League One’s 12 teams play each other home and away for a 22-game regular
season (Rugby Football League, n.d.).
The National Rugby League (NRL) is Australia’s premier rugby league competition,
founded in 1998. There is no promotion or relegation. Sixteen clubs compete in the NRL:
Brisbane Broncos, Canberra Raiders, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Cronulla-Sutherland
Sharks, Gold Coast Titans, Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles, Melbourne Storm, Newcastle Knights,
New Zealand Warriors (New Zealand), North Queensland Cowboys, Parramatta Eels, Penrith
8
Panthers, South Sydney Rabbitohs, St. George Illawarra Dragons, Sydney Roosters, and Wests
Tigers (National Rugby League, n.d.b).
The following is how the NRL playoffs were set up after the 2019 season, with team
logos corresponding to their final position in the league table, or “ladder (National Rugby
League, 2019)”:
The winners of Super League and the NRL meet annually in a one-off match called the
World Club Challenge.
Rugby league structures in both hemispheres were shaken up in the mid-1990s, which
explains why the two preeminent competitions of a sport that is over 100 years old have both
been playing for barely a quarter of that time. Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch was
9
instrumental in the formation of both Super League and the NRL through his BSkyB television
property in the United Kingdom and his competition with media mogul Kerry Packer in
Australia.
While Super League contests its season in the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months,
rugby league is traditionally a winter sport in England, and the RFL Championship, the previous
top-flight contest, played its season in those months. Wilson, Plumley and Barrett describe “run-
down grounds, poor facilities and financial depression” compounding dwindling interest in the
game in the final years of the pre-Super League era (Wilson et al. 2015, 295). A major reason for
the switch was that Murdoch’s media property BSkyB did not want to have rugby league
compete with the Premier League, the top division of English soccer, which it also owned the
broadcasting rights to. The warmer summertime weather was also thought to be conducive to
attendance (Wilson et al. 2015, 296).
The NRL was formed following the “Super League war” between Murdoch and Kerry
Packer, a fellow titan of Australian media. The Australian Rugby League (ARL) was, prior to
Murdoch’s entrance into rugby league media, in charge of the sport’s premier competition in
Australia. Rugby league was televised at the time on a channel called Nine, which was operated
in part by Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. (Rowe 1997, 222).
Murdoch wished to enter the market through cable provider Foxtel, a venture between a
subsidiary of his News Corporation and Telstra, an Australian telecommunications company.
Packer also owned a cable provider, Optus Vision, through his company Optus (Rowe 1997,
222).
Murdoch’s interests formed a breakaway competition called Super League in 1994 to
ease Packer’s hold on rights to Australian rugby league. ARL players and clubs were invited to
10
join the new outfit, but Packer, who owned both broadcast and cable rights to rugby league in
Australia, threatened legal action against anyone who tried to interfere with those rights. ARL
clubs were also bound to five-year contracts with the competition. A series of legal proceedings
followed, with Packer winning the first round and Murdoch winning on appeal (Rowe 1997,
224).
On December 19, 1997, the ARL settled with News Limited, Murdoch’s outfit, after one
season of Super League and the ARL running separate competitions. The two competitions
merged into the National Rugby League, which still runs today (Sydney Cricket & Sports
Ground Trust, n.d.).
Geographic and Cultural Parameters of Rugby League in England
Owing to its geographic and class origins, English rugby league has been associated with
the working class in the north of the country since its start. The following is a map from Tony
Collins’ Rugby League in Twentieth Century Britain: A Social and Cultural History (Collins
2006):
11
Collins mentions George Orwell’s visit to Wigan while Orwell was writing The Road to
Wigan Pier. Noting Orwell’s apparent contempt for the working class in the industrial town,
Collins points out that he completely glossed over a key part of the area’s culture:
“[an] aspect of working-class life in Wigan and the north of England that Orwell chose to ignore
completely. Less than half a mile from his lodgings in Wigan stood Central Park rugby league
ground. On Orwell’s first Saturday in the town over 15,000 working-class Wiganers assembled
to watch their team take on Liverpool Stanley. If he had joined them, he would have discovered a
vibrant, thrilling spectacle played and watched almost exclusively by working class men and
women (Collins 2006, Preface IX).”
Rugby league played a part in the cultural discourse that led up to the United Kingdom’s
2019 general election, often seen as a referendum on Brexit, or the UK’s exit from the European
Union. The northern working-class archetype of “Workington Man” was raised as a group of
voters worth paying attention to:
“The men of Workington have found themselves in a spotlight of sorts - or a flurry of political
headlines at least - after a think tank marked them out as a key election target. Workington Man
is 2019's Worcester Woman. But who is he? And what do men in Workington - a former mining
town on the Cumbrian coast - think of the stereotype?
According to Onward - the right-of centre-think tank that gave birth to the creation - Workington
Man is older, white and Northern.
The imagined poster boy for "middle England" likes rugby league and Labour. He voted for
Brexit and feels the country is moving away from his views (Cooper 2019).”
Workington Man was seen as a swing vote due to his supposed support for leaving the
EU. Cooper mentions that going into the 2019 election, Workington had a Conservative MP
(Member of Parliament) for three years following a special election in the 1970s, but had never
elected one in a general election.
Writing in November 2019, Tony Collins asserted that “resistance to elites” is in the
“DNA” of rugby league in an article for the Guardian titled “Rugby league is a rebel sport – its
northern strongholds will never turn Conservative (Collins 2019).”
12
Collins expresses skepticism that holders of “rugby league traditions” will vote for the
Conservative Party, arguing that the working-class revolt that spawned rugby league in the first
place ensures that the game and its fans are set apart from the “Old Etonians in charge of Britain
(Collins 2019).”
He cites the rugby union authorities’ contemptuous reaction to the northerners’ desire for
professionalism in the 1890s: “Why should we hand [rugby] over without a struggle to the
hordes of working men players who would quickly engulf all others?’ asked rugby and cricket
international Frank Mitchell in 1897.” Collins says nothing in British sport illustrates Britain’s
class divide like the split between rugby union and rugby league and the Rugby Football Union’s
banning for life of the rebels and anyone associated with the new sport (Collins 2019).
Collins continues:
“Rugby league communities have been devastated by deindustrialisation, austerity and
government policies over the past 30 years. Half of the English teams in the Super League come
from areas that are in the most deprived 10% in Britain. Workington itself has lost its coal and
steel industries, and is a long way from the prosperous town that launched its professional rugby
league club in 1945 (Collins 2019).
Collins sees support for Brexit in traditional rugby league areas as a continuation of the
anti-establishment feelings that birthed the game in the early 20
th
century. He argues that the
north has been let down by the current political system, and that support for Brexit is a “protest
vote (Collins 2019).”
Collins concludes with a prediction of the rugby league heartland’s voting patterns:
“While dissatisfaction with Labour also runs deep, it is unlikely that traditional rugby league
areas in the north of England will fall to the Tories (Collins 2019).” When the UK voted in
December 2019, Workington, home to a team in the third tier of English rugby league, elected a
Conservative MP.
13
Rugby league fans and rugby league’s traditional heartland have played a major part in
British politics in the last five years. The following is a breakdown of parliamentary
constituencies from cities and towns that are home to Super League clubs as they voted in the
2019 parliamentary election (BBC News, n.d.):
Labour
Hemsworth*, Huddersfield, Kingston upon
Hull East, Kingston upon Hull North,
Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, Leeds
West, Leeds Central, Leeds East, Leeds North
East, Leeds North West, Normanton,
Pontefract and Castleford; Salford and Eccles,
St Helens North, St Helens South and
Whiston; Warrington North, Wigan
Conservative
Elmet and Rothwell; Morley and Outwood,
Pudsey, Wakefield, Warrington South
The following is a similar breakdown from constituencies in towns and cities home to
clubs in the Championship, the second tier of English rugby league (BBC News, n.d.):
Labour
Batley and Spen; Ealing Central and Acton**;
Ealing North**, Ealing Southall**, Halton,
Hemsworth*, Halifax, Sheffield Brightside
and Hillsborough; Sheffield Central, Sheffield
Hallam, Sheffield Heeley, Sheffield South
East, Stalybridge and Hyde; Wythenshawe
and Sale East; York Central
Conservative
Altrincham and Sale West; Copeland,
Dewsbury, Leigh, Penistone and
Stocksbridge; York Outer
*The constituency of Hemsworth includes parts of both Wakefield, home to Super League’s
Wakefield Trinity, and Featherstone, home to the Championship’s Featherstone Rovers.
**These constituencies are outside rugby league’s traditional northern heartland, with the
London Borough of Ealing being home to the Championship’s London Broncos.
Brexit was, again, the key issue in the 2019 general election, with Boris Johnson’s
Conservatives vowing to “get Brexit done (Adam 2019).” Let’s take a look at how parliamentary
14
constituencies in rugby league areas voted on the 2016 referendum in which the UK decided to
leave the EU, kicking off the Brexit saga that concluded in January 2020. Here are results for
constituencies in Super League cities and towns (PoliMapper, n.d.):
Leave
Elmet and Rothwell; Hemsworth,
Huddersfield, Kingston upon Hull East,
Kingston upon Hull North, Kingston Upon
Hull West and Hessle; Leeds East, Leeds
West, Morley and Outwood; Normanton,
Pontefract and Castleford; Salford and Eccles,
St Helens North, St Helens South and
Whiston; Wakefield, Warrington North,
Warrington South, Wigan
Remain
Leeds Central, Leeds North East, Leeds North
West, Pudsey
Brexit referendum results for constituencies in the second-tier Championship
(PoliMapper, n.d.):
Leave
Batley and Spen, Copeland, Dewsbury,
Leigh, Halton, Hemsworth, Halifax,
Penistone and Stocksbridge; Sheffield
Brightside and Hillsborough; Sheffield
Heeley, Sheffield South East, Stalybridge and
Hyde;
Remain
Altrincham and Sale West; Ealing Central and
Acton; Ealing North, Ealing Southall,
Sheffield Central, Sheffield Hallam,
Wythenshawe and Sale East, York Central,
York Outer
The data shows that England’s core rugby league areas seem on the whole to embody the
Workington Man archetype, which is itself a bit of a paradox: supporting Brexit, but sticking
with Labour in a general election dominated by the Brexit issue and the Conservative Party’s
desire to see through the UK’s departure from the European Union.
15
Geographic and Cultural Parameters of Rugby League in Australia
Collins examines the Australian game’s relationship to and eventual breaking away from
Australia’s British forebears. He mentions rugby league’s status as a working-class game and the
testiness of the early Anglo-Australian rugby tests as factors that may cause one to come to the
conclusion that rugby league was a font of anti-British sentiment:
“Given its ties to organized labour, its widespread support in Catholic communities and the
overwhelmingly proletarian composition of its teams and crowds, Australian rugby league has in
many ways been representative of what Gavin Souter described as ‘those who in varying degrees
had rejected, outgrown, forgotten or simply never known the British inheritance. To [this] group,
which might be called the indigenous Australians, belonged a large part of the working class,
most Irish Catholics, the children of European immigrants, the industrially militant and the
politically radical (Collins 2005. 2).’”
However, despite the physicality and on-field antagonism of early matches between
English and Australian teams, the Australian game’s attitude toward Britain was originally
warm:
“‘We are just as British as you are’, protested Harry ‘Jersey’ Flegg, the president of the NSWRL,
in 1950 during an argument with British tour manager George Oldroyd. This view was reiterated
strenuously four years later by E.S. Brown, who addressed the British RFL Council on behalf of
the Australian governing body: ‘Australians look to England as the mother country in war, in
industry and also in rugby league football (Collins 2005, 6).”
Collins explains the apparent discrepancy that a game of the Australian working class
that birthed extreme on-field rivalry with England could be so loyal to imperial Britain by
comparing Australia’s sporting landscape to that of England’s industrial north, rather than that of
the middle and upper-class southerners that birthed sports like rugby union. Australians were
said to share northerners’ “forthrightness, egalitarianism, and opposition to snobbery,” qualities
that spurred rugby league’s split from rugby union in the first place. (Collins 2005, 7).
English journalist Eddie Waring noted Australians’ deep connection to England during
the 1946 British tour of Australia: “everyone calls England ‘Home.’ It is immaterial whether
16
they have ever known anyone from the old country. It appears to be everyone’s ambition to go
‘home’ and to hear youngsters with no English connections at all talking about ‘home’ – England
– was truly remarkable (Collins 2005, 10).” The English, for their part, enjoyed their time in
Australia, a country that was not as class stratified, where they were seen as equals (Collins
2005, 11).
Australian fans’ reaction to sport, called “barracking,” also reflected northern English
attitudes toward their games:
“Indeed, the criticisms of Australian cricket crowds voiced by English cricketers such as A. E.
Stoddart – ‘we have been insulted, hooted at, and hissed in every match and on every ground
without exception’ – were repeated by middle-class English commentators about crowds in the
north of England. Why should gentlemen rugby players, pondered Bertram Robinson in 1896,
‘pander to the howling mobs that crowd the circular stands of some Yorkshire coliseum (Collins
2005, 8)?’”
There was much kinship between British rugby league players and the Australians they
encountered on their tours. Collins says that the British upper classes were hostile to Australians
for the same reasons they were hostile to northerners in their own country. Novelist Angela
Thirkell called Australia “an entire continent peopled by the Lower Orders (Collins 2005, 9).”
Collins continues about the decline of Australian rugby league’s affection for Britain:
“As with so many aspects of the Anglo-Australian relationship, the ties that bound rugby league
so closely together began to tear apart in the early 1960s.The changing economic relationship
between the two countries, the diplomatic consequences of decolonization, the ending of free
entry into Britain for all Commonwealth citizens, and the Macmillan government’s application to
join the European Common Market without consulting the Australian government led to growing
Australian alienation from Britain (Collins 2005, 12-13).”
The Australian way of referring to their British cousins had also changed. Far from the
“chums” of the early days, with pronunciation modified to “chooms” to reflect the accent of the
northerners (Collins 2005, 11), the new nomenclature was typified by “Poms,” or, less
charitably, “Pommy bastards (Collins 2005, 13).” The 1962 British tour of Australia was marred
17
by an argument between an official of the St George club and British manager Stuart Hadfield, in
which the Australian told Hadfield that “you are a lot of English bastards (Collins 2005, 14).”
The 1966 tour was managed by Jack Errock, who stated that he would never tour
Australia again, adopting the term “Pom” for himself to show his distaste for the country. On the
1970 tour, British player Malcolm Reilly was involved in a fight at a Brisbane party after being
called a “Pommy bastard.” Reilly was later arrested in Sydney (Collins 2005, 14-15).
Collins writes that by the 1970s the dynamic between the two countries had changed,
with Australia no longer deferring to imperial Britain. Australian rugby league had also
surpassed the English game, and so Australian sporting interest drifted to domestic pursuits:
“But the narrow international base of rugby league meant that in Australia the importance and
intensity of Anglo-Australian test matches was replaced by the annual NSW versus Queensland
‘State of Origin’ series, in which the same aggressive masculinity originally displayed against
fellow British ‘chooms’ was now employed against fellow Australian ‘mates’ (Collins 2005,
16).”
The yearly State of Origin series pits players from the states of New South Wales and
Queensland, the traditional epicenters of Australian rugby league, against each other in a best-of-
three series in the middle of each NRL season. Two million Australians watched the final match
of the 2019 series, with slightly more watching the opening match. An audience of 877,000
watched in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, compared to 670,000 in Brisbane,
Queensland’s capital (Carmody 2019).
Much of the territory on rugby’s side of the so-called Barassi Line is in New South Wales
and Queensland. Sydney and Brisbane are the major cities in the part of the country where rugby
league and rugby union are the prevailing football codes, while Melbourne and Adelaide anchor
Australian rules football’s territory, with Melbourne being the traditional mecca of the Aussie
18
rules code. Carmody reports that the final game of rugby league’s 2019 State of Origin only
attracted 249,000 viewers in Melbourne.
The Barassi Line is illustrated in detail below (Kuestenmacher 2017):
Parallels Between Rugby League and the American Sporting Landscape
Rugby league is similar to American football, as both sports ultimately descend from
rugby union. The major similarity between the two sports is the down system. In American
football, the team on offense has four tries, or “downs,” to advance the ball ten yards for a new
set of downs. If they fail, they surrender possession. In rugby league, the team with the ball
surrenders possession if they are tackled six times in an offensive series.
The two games are also similar in culture. Rugby league came from England’s industrial
north, and that region is still the game’s traditional heartland in that country and the area where it
is most popular.
American football also has a long history in the “Rust Belt,” the areas of the Northeast
and Midwest where heavy industry was traditionally concentrated. The loss of industrial jobs and
a general sense of alienation in the Rust Belt evoke northern England’s support of Brexit.
19
S.L. Price chronicled football and the steel industry in the town of Aliquippa,
Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. The town produced football greats such as Mike Ditka, Tony
Dorsett, Ty Law, and Darrelle Revis, but the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company provided the
town’s economic backbone for those who did not make the NFL.
Ten thousand local residents were employed on hourly wages at Jones & Laughlin’s
Aliquippa Works in 1979 (Price 2017, 269). As the 1980s began, layoffs ravaged the mill across
its various departments, leading Pete Eritano, president of the local chapter of United
Steelworkers, to write President Ronald Reagan:
“Where have you been when our people needed you the most?... Our people have paid a high
price in this game plan you call recovery. We have a 30 percent unemployment rate in Beaver
County… Most of the layoffs have been for a year or longer. Homes and dreams have been lost;
marriages and families have been torn apart.
We currently have 1,000 steelworkers at our plant who have run out of benefits. These people
live on a $25 food certificate that we supply every two weeks. Our food fund of over $200,000
will be gone in three months. Where have you been (Price 2017, 271)?”
By the summer of 1985, only 700 workers were employed at Jones & Laughlin in
Aliquippa (Price 2017, 272).
The Rust Belt’s despair seeped into its love of football in the mid-1990s, when Cleveland
Browns owner Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore, where they play today as the Ravens.
Through community activism, Cleveland fans were able to secure their team’s likeness and
history for an expansion franchise the NFL granted their city, also called the Browns. Cleveland
fans’ reaction to losing their team was reflective of the psyche of a region many felt had seen
better days:
“Many Clevelanders (people in the city, suburbanites, and transplanted citizens) viewed the
departure of the half-century-old team as a tragic repetition of the woes experienced by working-
class, ‘blue-collar’ Clevelanders in post–World War II America. Many felt a part of this blue-
collar identity and feared it would further diminish if the Browns left town (Linden 2016, 342).
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Linden chronicles Cleveland’s decline after World War II: 130,000 jobs in the area
vanished between 1958 and 1977. The polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, and the city
defaulted financially in 1978 (Linden 2016, 344).
The thought of losing the Browns, many said, struck a blow to Cleveland’s very identity
as a city, as the Browns were thought to represent their hometown’s very essence. Linden quotes
Richard H. Sleeman:
“substance was more important than the surface, and talent won out over glitz and glitter. The
reason I have remained a Cleveland Browns fan is just that. The Browns don’t have any
emblems on their helmets. They don’t need cheerleaders, a mascot or a marching band. They
play ball on natural grass in a stadium that is exposed to the gusty wind whipping over Lake Erie
(Linden 2016, 347).”
Linden argues that to save the Browns was to “retain Clevelanders’ beloved ‘blue-collar’
identity and to defeat selfish white-collar elitists (Linden 2016, 347).”
Much like industrial northern England’s support of Brexit, the Rust Belt has been at the
forefront of American politics in recent years, with Donald Trump’s success in states such as
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin cited as a key contributor to his victory over
Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
McQuarrie argues that the industrial Midwest was faced with a choice between a “New
Democratic Party” unconcerned with the issues facing them and Trump, the Republican
nominee, who “spoke of a national crisis and who appeared to directly challenge the policy
consensus that offered little hope for a region in decline (McQuarrie 2017, 121).”
The Rust Belt made Trump’s election possible because "for the first time, the decades-
long decline of the industrial Midwest could find an outlet in national partisan politics
(McQuarrie 2017, 122).”
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Insight from Rugby League Fans
In original research, fans of both Super League and the NRL were asked to answer some
questions on their competitions’ respective Reddit communities. Reddit is a website divided into
smaller communities dedicated to a common interest, be it a political candidate, band, television
show, or sports team. Super League and the NRL both have their own Reddit communities where
fans gather to discuss matches and comment on rugby league-related content, and they were used
to gather opinions and insights from established rugby league fans.
The questions asked of Super League fans were:
-What makes the matchday atmosphere special?
-Is rugby league still a working man's game? How important is this identity to modern rugby
league fans in the UK?
-Is there a specific “type” who supports your club?
-Is rugby league your favorite sport?
-If so, why do you prefer it to rugby union or association football?
The questions asked of NRL fans were:
-What makes the matchday atmosphere special?
-Is there a specific “type” of person who follows rugby league? A stereotypical league fan, if you
will.
-Is there a specific “type” who supports your club?
-Is the NRL your favorite sport?
-If so, why do you prefer it to rugby union or AFL?
-How would you describe the state of rugby league-focused media and broadcasting in
Australia? If you could change one thing about the way the NRL is covered, what would it be?
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Insight from Super League Fans on Reddit
Reddit user GranadaReport on the Super League matchday experience:
“However, the matchday atmosphere in Rugby league is distinct from Association Football in
that there is much less crowd trouble in Rugby League (for the most part). Whilst I've never
attended a football match, England had a documented history of football violence and it's my
understanding most matches have a heavy police presence. As a Wigan season ticket holder for
many years I can say it was very rare to see any police at RL matches (other than the final) and
supporters of both teams are not kept separate when entering of leaving the ground
(r/superleague, 2020).”
GranadaReport on working-class identity in the game:
“Rugby League's fans are all still mostly poorer (relative to the rest of the UK ofc) due to the
realities of the places it is popular, but I think due to how the British economy has de-
industrialized I think the "working man's game" moniker is a little anachronistic. Time was,
Rugby League supporters worked low skill manual labour jobs like coal mining and factory
work. These industries have gone, and ultimately any kind of shared identity people used to get
from all working in the same industry has gone with them…
Ultimately I think the most you can say about Rugby League support is that it's highly localized.
Go a few miles down the road from somewhere that it is popular and you'll struggle to find
anyone who cares about the sport at all (r/superleague, 2020).”
User bobthesnail3 wrote in detail about why he or she prefers rugby league to rugby
union and soccer. First, they say, rugby league is quicker-paced, whereas in rugby union, a
player “would spend 90% of his time waiting for the ball or kicking long (r/superleague, 2020).”
Bobthesnail3 says that soccer is great when it’s good, but it can also be dull, as “most
games aren't thrillers and most teams aren't world class.” The user also takes issue with diving,
which rugby league players are said not to engage in, and argues that soccer “rewards
characteristics that aren't particularly likable in a person (diving, feigning injury, general
shithousing/cheating, smug arrogance, rude towards officials) (r/superleague, 2020).”
Bobthesnail3 takes issue with rugby league media in the UK, citing an advertisement
from broadcaster Sky that they claim shows disrespect for fans: “The people who like (rugby
league) are flat cap wearing stereotypes. It's a joke to them (r/superleague, 2020).”
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Insight from NRL Fans on Reddit
User greasysouthscap leads off with a definition of the Australian rugby league fan:
“a stereotypical league fan is from the NSW or QLD regions of Australia as the rest of it is
mainly dominated by AFL. They range from working class to lower class as league has always
been a lower class version of union in a way. for example still to this day private schools play
union but public schools play league. they’re also typically a bit bogan or as you might be more
familiar with ‘redneck’ (r/NRL, 2020).”
User thetoottrain expands:
“Rugby league has always been a ‘battlers’ type of sport. There are certainly wealthy fans but a
majority of fans are honest, working class people. That’s why fans turn up to outdated suburban
grounds and stand on grass hills. Stereotypes change with each fanbase but overall I’[d] say the
regular Rugby League fan is a bit of an honest, working class larrikin (r/NRL, 2020).”
Greasysouthscap on the preference for rugby league over other sports:
“yes league is my favourite sport. I prefer it over AFL cause (sic) AFL is scrappy, it doesn’t feel
like there’s much structure to the game and it’s too back and forth for my liking, where as (sic)
league has a clear 6 tackle set and feels like the turns in the game are more deserved in a way? I
prefer it over union for a few reasons. Union is super hard to get into, there’s barely any
marketing around it and only international games are shown on free to air main channels. If you
weren’t looking for it or like it already you would barely know it exists. The game is also super
technical, there’s many tiny rules and frankly weird rules such as their advantage rule which can
go for about 5 minutes. It also has some of the annoying back and forth that AFL does such as
kicking out on the full for a line out which just feels repetitive (r/NRL, 2020).”
A user who has since deleted his or her account grew up in Western Australia, where
Australian rules football is the dominant code, but prefers rugby league: “The game [Australian
rules] is too spread out, there’s not enough confrontation and interaction between players, and I
view it (today) as a very slow and scrappy game. Especially today, too many rules have been
implemented that make the game a bore to watch (r/NRL, 2020).”
Thetoottrain has disdain for other football codes: “Union is the same as League, minus
the entertaining bits. AFL is mind-numbingly boring and annoying to watch (r/NRL, 2020).”
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Research Conclusion
The rules, history, competitive structures, and cultural relevance of rugby league in
England and Australia have been spelled out in this research. This project will focus on Super
League, the British-based competition, and its marketability to an American audience.
Rugby league is marketable to an American audience because of its similarities in
gameplay and scoring to American football, already a major spectator sport in the United States.
The plan is to persuade a major television outlet to televise Super League matches on
Friday afternoons. Super League is more marketable than the Australian-based National Rugby
League because the time difference between the East Coast of the United States and United
Kingdom is only five hours; a 7:45 PM kickoff anywhere in England is a mid-afternoon slot on
the East Coast and a midday one on the West Coast.
NBC Sports is a model for rugby league coverage in the United States; the network has a
strong foothold in sports outside the traditional mainstream: in addition to the NHL and Premier
League soccer, they have already entered the rugby world rugby union and rugby sevens, a faster
seven-man version of rugby union. NBC’s Premier League coverage has been instrumental in
popularizing soccer in the United States and proving that foreign sports can work in America.
The lunch-pail attitude and working-class heritage outlined in the research will be another factor
in promoting the sport, as the American audience values authenticity and grit in sports.
Rugby league is poised to fit its own space in the American sporting calendar. The season
is roughly coincidental with baseball season, meaning that much of it takes place over the
summer, when football, basketball, and hockey are in their off-seasons. Rugby league is by its
nature a fast-paced and often high-scoring sport, which will be attractive to those who are not
baseball fans. The presence of baseball will not be a deterrent to baseball fans, however, as fans
25
are used to following multiple sports through the winter, when football, basketball, and hockey
are all active. There will be little direct competition with baseball, however, as the Friday
timeslot will be roughly from 2:30 to 5:00 P.M. Eastern time, before the slate of night baseball
games starts.
Pitch Introduction
The research presented provides an overview of rugby league’s history, the social and
cultural importance in its heartlands, and the sport’s existing competition structures in England
and Australia. The following is a pitch outlining rugby league’s suitability for American
television and its ability to find an audience in this country.
Audience
The audience for the pitch is, broadly, sports media outlets interested in the rights to a
sport new to the American media landscape. Two experts were interviewed for this pitch. David
Koppett is Vice President of Content Production & Strategy at Pac-12 Networks, a college
sports-focused network based on the West Coast. The second expert is a national sports media
executive who did not wish to be named.
Justification: Established Similarity to a Familiar Product
There are multiple reasons why rugby league is viable in the United States. The first is
the aforementioned similarity to American football. American football fans can use their
knowledge of the sport they have followed for years to get on board with another highly physical
football game. Rugby league can act as a complement to NFL and NCAA football, as Super
League’s season runs from very late January to early October, enveloping American football’s
offseason with minimal overlap with the NFL/NCAA season.
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Justification: The Untapped Cultural Allure of Rugby League in the United States
Culturally, rugby league fits right into the American sporting scene. The research
highlighted the game’s working-class origins and how even in contemporary England the game
is most popular in areas that were dominated by heavy industry in the 20
th
century.
American sport is heavily influenced by a working-class ethos, or, as it is more
commonly termed, a “blue-collar” ethos.
Baseball player Jimmy Rollins talked about blue-collar Philadelphia, where he played for
the Phillies, and contrasted it with glitzy and glamorous Los Angeles, where he later played for
the Dodgers:
“The general area, the city [of Philadelphia] being blue-collar, it’s not conducive for a superstar.
You can be good, but you’ve got to be blue-collar along the way, keep your mouth shut, just go
and work. Where obviously, this is LA. It’s almost like it’s OK to be more flamboyant. You kind
of appreciate that the more you’re out there. Because LA loves a star (Rosenthal, 2015).”
A tweet from the NFL boasted about blue-collar Buffalo’s love of the Bills: “A blue
collar city like Buffalo. the Bills are everything (NFL, 2013).”
Paul Lukas in The New Republic details teams’ attempts to project a blue-collar image:
“For example, when the Cleveland Browns unveiled a new set of uniforms in 2015, a press
release explained that the topstitching on the jerseys exemplified Cleveland’s ‘hard-working,
blue-collar demeanor.’ That same year, the Milwaukee Bucks unveiled new uniforms with a blue
stripe inside the collar, which the team said was ‘representative of the blue-collar work ethic of
not only the Bucks, but also of the city and state that the team proudly represents (Lukas, 2020).”
“In 2016, the University of Kentucky added blue collars to uniforms throughout its athletics
program, ‘to emphasize the work ethic of the people of Kentucky.’ That was the same year the
University of Oregon’s football team wore jerseys with blue collars for the first game of the
season; a tweet from the team said this represented ‘blue-collar ethics (Lukas, 2020).’”
Lukas goes on to describe football coaches at Eastern Michigan University donning
name-tagged work shirts and the Boise State Broncos literally stitching the words “blue collar”
onto the blue collars of their jerseys (Lukas, 2020).
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Michael Miner recalls his youth in Ontario to cite that hockey is a blue-collar sport, in
response to a fellow writer at the Chicago Reader asserting that the championship Blackhawks
teams of the early 2010s represent not Chicago but its wealthy suburbs:
“When I think about where hockey players come from I think of the mines of Sudbury and plains
of Saskatchewan (home of my hero, Gordie Howe), not the private prep schools of the North
Shore. I also think about fathers with a lot more resolve than education coming from far and
wide to work those mines (Miner, 2013).”
The Reader piece Miner responds to takes a dimmer view of hockey’s supposed blue-
collar sensibility, but nonetheless quotes Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times extolling the
Blackhawks’ supposed representation of blue-collar Chicago:
"We want to see our city in these Blackhawks,’ Morrissey asserted. He pointed to center
Andrew Shaw, who in the first period Monday turned the other cheek in time for a puck to split
it. Shaw ‘got stitched up and got back to work because that’s what you gotta do as a Chicagoan,’
Morrissey wrote. ‘You go to work even if you don’t feel so good. You reverse the flow of a
river. You build a canal. You move cattle and pack meat. You rebuild a city after a fire (Bogira,
2013)."
Justification: The Established Appeal of Foreign Sports in the United States
The allure of a blue-collar image is well-documented in American sports, and further,
there is evidence that foreign sports, especially sports from a fellow English-speaking country,
can work in the United States.
According to NBC Sports’ data, more than 35 million viewers tuned into its coverage of
Premier League soccer in the 2018-19 season. A March 2019 match between Arsenal and
Manchester United brought in 1.68 million viewers on NBC, NBCSports.com, NBC Sports’ app,
and Spanish-language channel Telemundo (NBC Sports Group Press Box, 2019).
The final day of the 2018-19 season, where all 20 Premier League clubs played
simultaneously and the title race between Manchester City and Liverpool came to a head,
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garnered 2.2 million American viewers over ten Comcast-owned channels (Fisher, Tan, and
Williams, 2019).
WorldSoccerTalk details how the United States’ Premier League audience has grown
over the time NBC has had the American broadcast rights. In the 2009-10 season, Premier
League matches on ESPN2 averaged 262,697 viewers, while NBC’s matches in 2018-19
averaged 457,000 viewers, a nearly 74% increase (Darel, 2019).
Focusing specifically on streaming, “NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app
delivered 879 million live streaming minutes – the most all time — during the 2018-19 season.
In addition, seven of the 10 most-streamed Premier League matches in the U.S. took place in
2018-19 (NBC Sports Group Press Box, 2019).”
The sports executive cites Nielsen ratings as the most important factor in determining the
success or lack thereof of a media venture, but notes that outlets are starting to look at total
audience, which includes streaming numbers and viewers watching the game taped after the fact.
Total audience, and the extra viewers it reflects, will be important for rugby league, as the entire
target audience may not be able always watch every game live, with kickoffs happening in
midday and the early afternoon.
Koppett on ratings: “For a mass-market TV product, only demo ratings matter (usually
Adults 25-54 or Men 25-54) to advertisers, rather than overall household ratings. For a DTC
[direct-to-consumer] live streaming offering with an upfront fee, I think the measures that matter
most are total subscribers and price, although minutes consumed could also matter to
advertisers.”
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Marketing
The sports executive believes there is room for rugby league on American television,
citing NBC Sports’ coverage of rugby sevens, a faster-paced version of rugby union with seven
players to a team. He says rugby league “has many of the elements American sports fans love:
speed, a certain amount of violence, a reasonable amount of scoring.” He does not believe such
coverage would be profitable immediately, however, believing that promoters of a new sport
have to be realistic about profits and losses.
Koppett believes rugby league is best suited for a niche audience on a streaming
platform, both because of the high barrier of entry to traditional TV and the growing numbers of
cord-cutters, who forgo cable for streaming platforms, and what he called the cord-nevers, who
never had cable in the first place. He also applies the concepts of depth opportunity vs width
opportunity: does rugby league keep existing users on the platform or does it broaden the
audience to new users?
The sports executive calls television coverage of a sport a “marketing spend,” meaning
that while it may not be immediately profitable, it is necessary for the sport to become relevant
and grow. He mentions sports outside of the four major American/Canadian sports (football,
baseball, basketball, and hockey) buying time to get on television.
The sports executive continues: “You will only get on TV if you find a way to pay for it
as a marketing expense. That means you will have to find a way to foot the bill for $40-$50k per
match. You might get some of that back via sponsors, but you are going to have to sell them
yourself. Giving them signage at the games, spots in the telecast, etc.”
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The type of product advertisement that comes to mind when thinking about recouping
money in rugby league coverage is hard seltzer. Many large brewers have come out with seltzer
products, and seltzer drinkers overlap nicely with America’s rugby league demographic.
From The Drinks Business:
…Seltzer is on the rise. The US alcohol market volume share of hard seltzer jumped threefold
from 0.8% in 2018 to 2.5% in 2019, to 82.5 million nine-litre cases, worth approximately
US$3.4 billion at retail value…
Hard seltzers tap into a fair few consumer trends. They are typically packaged in aluminium
cans, making them easily transportable and consumed on-the-go, [they] come with a lower ABV
than wine (around 4-5%), and usually have a comparatively low calorie count prominently
displayed on the label.
The Boston Beer Company, makers of Sam Adams, is the second-largest craft brewer in the
world, but [in] launching its Truly hard seltzer brand in April 2016, the company now sells more
hard seltzer than it does beer.
Molson Coors, meanwhile, changed its name as part of a major restructure of the business last
October to reflect the fact that it is branching out beyond mainstream lager and into other drinks
such as hop-flavoured sparkling water, craft beer, and hard seltzer (Hancock, 2020).
White Claw, a leading hard seltzer brand, sold $638 million worth of product last year,
and InBev, parent company of Anheuser-Busch and ultimately Bud Light, has ramped up
advertising of its Bud Light Seltzer and Natural Light Seltzer lines in response (Beer, 2020).
Quantcast neatly outlines the seltzer demographic:
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(George, 2019)
The sports executive also brought up gambling as a tie-in to rugby league: “If you can
find a way to make rugby super easy to understand from a sports gambling aspect…you might
find some people who will over-pay for the marketing assets.” The executive notes gambling
outlets are in a peculiar position that can be advantageous to content producers: “Sports
Gambling advertisers are the only group out there with a marketing spend looking for content. It
most cases, it is the other way around: there is content out there looking for advertisers with a
marketing spend.”
Gambling is another area where rugby league’s similarity to football is a boon, as it can
be gambled on in a similar fashion. Point spreads in rugby league will be similar to those in NFL
and NCAA football, as tries are worth four points compared to a touchdown’s six, with the
opportunity for conversions (1-2 points in American football, 2 in rugby league) afterward.
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Content Pitch and Target Demographics
The Friday afternoon timeslot is the natural home for rugby league. Friday matches that
kick off at 7:45 p.m. in the United Kingdom will kick off at 2:45 p.m. on the East Coast of the
United States and 11:45 a.m. on the West Coast. There is next to no competition with other
sports, barring the occasional day baseball game, in the afternoon timeslot.
The rugby league coverage will target the same demographic that the Premier League
appeals to. Morning Consult has produced “demographic breakdowns of U.S. adults who said the
English Premier League was their favorite European soccer league versus those who said the
NFL, NBA or [Major League Baseball] were their favorite U.S. leagues.”
Fifty-five percent of Premier League fans made at least $50,000 a year, a higher share of
the fanbase as a whole than in any of the three American leagues surveyed. 84% live in urban or
suburban areas, beating out NBA fans (83% urban/suburban), NFL fans (75%) and MLB fans
(74%). Finally, Premier League fans are more educated: 27% have a bachelor’s degree
(compared to 25% of MLB fans, 21% of NBA fans, and 20% of NFL fans (Easley, 2019).
In short, Premier League fans, the segment of American sports who have already proven
themselves amenable to a new sport imported from England, skew urban or suburban, educated,
and comparably wealthy. Morning Consult’s data shows they differ from NFL fans, but not so
much that American football, that stepping stone to rugby league, is a foreign concept.
The plan for promoting rugby league to young urban professionals involves integrating
the sport into the pre-weekend laxity of a Friday workday. Much as NBC Sports has promoted
the Premier League through its “Premier League Mornings” program, where the studio team
analyzes the day’s fixtures in between sharing pictures of fans making a morning out of soccer
with their pajamas, breakfasts, and cups of coffee, “Rugby League Happy Hour” could promote
33
rugby league through ducking out of work a bit early on a Friday afternoon, heading to your
favorite bar to grab a drink, and asking the bartender to turn on the match.
The plan for appealing to a wider audience is to highlight rugby league’s similarity to
American football. Data from Statista shows 33% of American sports fans name the NFL as their
favorite sports league, dwarfing Major League Baseball (16%) in second place (Gough 2019).
Super League’s season starts around the time the NFL’s season ends, so it is an ideal
companion sport through the NFL and college football offseason. NBC Sports is also connected
with the NFL through its weekly Sunday Night Football telecast, providing an in to use NFL
players in advertising and promotion of Super League coverage.
The sports executive says of sports fans: “Of course there are different sub-cultures and
media is becoming cheaper and easier to access so you can probably find a way to get your
matches on TV or at least streamed. However, getting mass exposure and a large audience is the
trick and for that you need a little luck and magic… Is there a charismatic star people will love to
follow? Is there an incredible story?”
There is a North American-based Super League team that an American-focused rugby
league presentation could appeal to. Although they have withdrawn from the rest of the 2020
Super League season, the Toronto Wolfpack were promoted to Super League in 2019. The BBC
reports that they are planning to return in 2021 (Super League: No relegation in 2020 as Toronto
Wolfpack withdraw, 2020).
Although Toronto is obviously in Canada, not the United States, the Wolfpack bring the
game that much closer to American shores. Canada is also a prominent fixture in American
sports, which feature Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays, the NBA’s Toronto Raptors,
seven NHL teams, and three Major League Soccer clubs.
34
Koppett suggested appealing to ex-pats first; building an audience through the
transplanted English and Australian communities as a base. He also noted how deeply
entrenched established sports like football, baseball, basketball and hockey are in the United
States, and suggested appealing to younger viewers through social media such as TikTok and
Instagram to build a brand.
Professional Action: Possible Landing Spots for Rugby League
The plan is to take the concepts laid out above to network executives to gauge interest in
showing live rugby league from England’s Super League competition. There are many
possibilities for where this new addition to American sports media could land.
First are the traditional cable powerhouses and their experiences with the identified rugby
league demographics and suitability for such an idea.
NBC and its cable outlet NBC Sports Network have experience, mentioned above, with
English soccer and rugby union, and their coverage and promotion of the Premier League is an
influence on the way I plan to take rugby league to a new country.
NBC also has a contract with the NFL, showing Sunday Night Football, the week’s
marquee matchup, in prime time on Sunday nights.
Fox Sports is another option. Fox’s NFL coverage is well established. The network has
had the rights to NFL games since 1993 (Curtis, 2018). Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports’ cable network,
has been showing live matches from Australia’s NRL during the COVID-19 pandemic (Walsh,
2020).
ESPN is well-positioned in the NFL market with its weekly Monday Night Football
telecast and Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show. ESPN also has the rights to many foreign
sports, including Serie A, the top division of Italian soccer (Associated Press, 2019). In August
35
2020, ESPN+, ESPN’s online streaming service, will become the new home of the Bundesliga,
the top division of German soccer (ESPN+ gets Bundesliga rights starting in 2020, 2019).
For cable broadcasters, rugby league will be presented as a logical next step to
complement their existing American football and soccer properties.
There is a market for NFL content and demand to advertise even outside of live game
telecasts. Advertising revenue during NFL games increased 10% between September and
November 2019 (Friedman, 2020). From MediaPost:
Another recent estimate shows that for the entire 2019 regular season – Sept. 5 through Dec. 29 -
- NFL TV networks pulled in a collective $4.48 billion in TV advertising, according to iSpot.tv
– up 14% from the year before.
SMI says revenue from NFL games accounted for 17% of all season-to-date (September to
November) TV ad revenue across all TV broadcast network programming on major linear
channels. It also says 70% of Fox’s overall national ad revenue during the current broadcast year
comes from NFL programming (Friedman, 2020).
The NFL Draft, the annual event where teams select from a pool of eligible college
players, is also a televised event. More than 100 companies advertised during this year’s event,
including 60 for the first time. Major sponsors included Lowe’s, Verizon, Bud Light Seltzer, and
Pizza Hut (Williams, 2020).
These brands are prime advertisers for rugby league coverage, as they have already seen
it prudent to advertise during NFL games to reach the NFL’s demographic.
However, where rugby league can truly innovate in sports media is a focus on the young
urban professional and meeting them where they already are.
To carve out a niche and meet its prime demographic in its own territory, rugby league
could find its home on a streaming service. According to Statista, 70% of American members of
Generation Z and 65% of Millennials currently subscribe to Netflix. A further 8% and 10%
respectively share a password on someone else’s Netflix account (Watson, 2020).
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An advantage of Netflix is its horizontal format. Netflix does not have to worry about
time constraints or jockeying for time slots with other content, as it is being streamed on a
website, as opposed to being shown on a cable network that can only show one program at once.
Video game streaming platform Twitch is another outside-the-box idea for presentation.
Twitch’s main use is as a platform to watch others play video games, so live sports is a logical
way for the service to branch out. There is precedent for live sports on Twitch, as the platform
carried the NFL’s Thursday Night Football in the 2019 season in partnership with Fox and
Amazon Prime Video (Are you ready for some Thursday Night Football?, 2019).
Non-Conventional Potential Advertisers
There are multiple avenues for advertising and sponsorships on a rugby league package
delivered through a streaming site. While large brands like those that advertise on NFL telecasts
will be courted and possibly swayed by the lower costs of advertising on a new venture, podcast
advertisers are just as well-suited to meet their customers at this juncture.
The young urban professional is the specific demographic most targeted by this plan, and
they are big podcast listeners. Forty-eight percent of podcast listeners are between the ages of 12
and 34 (Winn, 2020). They also trend wealthy: 45% have a yearly household income of more
than $250,000. Businesses spent $497 million on podcast advertising in 2018, and 54% of
podcast listeners reported considering buying a product advertised on a podcast (Jovic 2020).
Next, consider the top podcast advertisers and how they are best positioned to expand
into advertising to their audience through online streaming of rugby league in the same way they
advertise to them through podcasts. Rugby league will allow podcast advertisers to keep up
brand awareness through a second medium. According to Magellan, the top 15 podcast
advertisers in August 2019 were, in order:
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• ZipRecruiter
• Geico
• BetterHelp
• SimpliSafe
• Indeed
• Progressive
• Spotify
• Squarespace
• Rocket Mortgage
• FabFitFun
• TrueCar
• HelloFresh
• Native
• ADT
• Third Love (Magellan, 2019)
Professional Action: Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair executives could not be reached in time; two Sinclair Broadcast Group
executives to be reached out to in the future are Steve Rosenberg, President of Local Sports; and
Scott Shapiro, Chief Strategy Officer of Sports. Both Shapiro and Rosenberg were hired by
Sinclair in July 2020.
In 2019, Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired a string of regional sports networks under the
Fox brand name from the Walt Disney Company as a result of Disney’s acquisition of Twenty-
First Century Fox. Regional sports networks are sports-focused cable networks available in a
specific region with content tailored to local sports teams, including live telecasts of games from
Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL, and Major League Soccer.
According to Variety, the outlets acquired by Sinclair are: Sports Arizona, Fox Sports
Detroit, Fox Sports Florida, Fox Sports Sun, Fox Sports North, Fox Sports Wisconsin, Fox
Sports Ohio, SportsTime Ohio, Fox Sports South, Fox Sports Carolina, Fox Sports Tennessee,
Fox Sports Southeast, Fox Sports Southwest, Fox Sports Oklahoma, Fox Sports New Orleans,
38
Fox Sports Midwest, Fox Sports Kansas City, Fox Sports Indiana, Fox Sports San Diego, Fox
Sports West, and Prime Ticket (McNary, 2019).
While the cord-cutting movement, where consumers leave traditional cable services for
online streaming options, has picked up some steam, Multichannel News reports that 90% of
MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) subscribers are not planning to leave the
model of traditional pay TV in the next six months (Wong, 2019).
Regional sports networks are a major factor keeping people on cable. Regional sports
networks hold the rights to live broadcasts of local teams; unless a game is nationally televised
on ESPN, Fox Sports 1, or a free-to-air network, the regional sports network is the only way to
watch a given team in its local market. Wong continues:
“In the qualitative research we conduct, we often hear that a key reason why people continue to
watch live TV is that they don’t want to see spoilers on social media; if they aren’t able to watch
something live, they will intentionally stay off social media to maintain the element of surprise.
With sports, where the drama can come down to the second, even a 10- or 15-second delay can
mean that someone has already posted on social media, texted or otherwise ruined the game-
winning play. In our qualitative research, we have encountered cord cutters who have access to
live streams of sports events, but have actually added an antenna to their home so they can watch
games live over-the-air without worrying about lag, buffering, or the stream cutting out (Wong,
2019).”
Essentially, sports fans are so concerned with avoiding spoilers that they have
supplemented their streaming packages with antennas to watch over-the-air games truly live. But
not every game is available over-the-air, forcing dependence on regional sports networks, driving
fans back to cable (Wong, 2019).
Horowitz Associates asked respondents to a survey how important “local and regional
sports networks” were when making media subscription decisions, with a score of 1 indicating a
39
response of “not important at all” and a score of 5 indicating very important.” Forty-two percent
answered with scores of 4 or 5, with 24% scoring 5, or “very important (Wong, 2019).”
Live sports are the bread and butter of the regional sports network, and rugby league
coverage on Friday afternoons will help to fill daytime schedules that currently feature less
lucrative programming.
On Friday, July 17, 2020, Fox Sports Southeast, one of the regional sports networks
recently acquired by Sinclair, televised Sports Stars of Tomorrow, an interview program
featuring high school athletes, and a repeat of a 2019 Major League Baseball game between the
Atlanta Braves and the Washington Nationals in the window that a Super League game would
fill. (TV Schedule for Fox Sports Southeast). In the same window on the same date, Fox Sports
Ohio showed Breaking Par All Stars; a golf show, jet skiing, powerboat racing, and Shogun
Fights 13; a series of mixed martial arts bouts (Fox Sports Ohio (Cleveland) - TV Listings
Guide).
Rugby league’s final appeal to Sinclair and its newest acquisitions is regional. One of
rugby league’s major selling points is its similarity to American football, already one of the
country’s most popular sports. The networks Sinclair acquired are mostly in the South and the
Midwest, both of which are major football regions.
The New York Times surveyed Facebook data to find out which states were most invested
in college football: Alabama was the most invested, with 34% of residents “liking” a college
team’s page. In order, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, South Carolina, Kentucky,
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio rounded out the top ten (Irwin and Quealy, 2014).
College football fandom has a long history in Southern culture:
“Newspapers burst with Civil War metaphors when Alabama played Washington in the 1926
40
Rose Bowl, even if heavily favored Washington was from the Northwest, not the North.
Washington led 12-0 at halftime but a rising Tide rallied and won, 20-19. Southerners struck up
brass bands as the team’s train chugged through small towns on its triumphal journey back to
Tuscaloosa, as if football could somehow atone for bitter defeat, deep poverty and the self-
inflicted wounds of Jim Crow…
‘The University of Alabama has what they call the pickup truck alumni, who have never set foot
on the campus,’ Jackson says. ‘That’s because of Bear Bryant. He won games. He took his
skinny-legged boys and played those big, old Midwestern schools and whupped them. It made
Alabamans proud. Same at the University of Georgia when Vince Dooley was there and
Herschel Walker was running up and down the field. It transcended things that usually divided
the South (Brady, 2017).’”
Previous research illustrated the importance of football to the industrial Midwest, or the
“Rust Belt.”
In short, rugby league provides Sinclair Broadcast Group with another live sport for its
regional sports networks. Live sports are not only the flagship offerings of regional sports
networks, but they are the reason many cable subscribers stick with cable, making them more
valuable to cable providers. The specific geography of the networks Sinclair acquired also comes
into play, as American football fans are a major target of rugby league’s appeal, and Sinclair’s
networks are mostly in regions that have already shown themselves to be heavily invested in that
sport.
Stadium is another streaming service where rugby league could fit in. Stadium launched
in 2017 and, according to its website, is
“the original multi-platform sports network featuring exclusive live and on-demand games and
events, extensive highlights, classic games, original programming, and daily live studio
programming. Stadium includes a 24/7 linear feed distributed across both digital and broadcast
platforms, as well as a comprehensive array of on-demand (VOD) digital content including
additional live games and events (About, 2020).”
The Washington Post calls Stadium “A mix of highlights, debate and analysis of the
day’s news… a lo-fi facsimile of what you might find on ESPN” and notes its acquisition of
41
NBA reporter Shams Charania and college football reporter Brett McMurphy, formerly of ESPN
(Strauss, 2019).
Regarding rights to live sports, Stadium’s college basketball lineup for the 2019-2020
season featured more than 65 games from Conference USA, Mountain West, Patriot League,
West Coast Conference and the Atlantic 10 Conference. Some of those games were broadcast
exclusively on Stadium’s college basketball-focused Facebook page (Hepburn, 2019).
The service also broadcast 31 college football games across three conferences:
Conference USA, the Mountain West Conference and the Patriot League. 15 of these games
were streamed on Stadium’s college football-focused Facebook page (Impey, 2019).
In addition to its digital offerings, Stadium also has a modest presence on traditional,
over-the-air broadcast television, reaching most of its 25 million homes that way (Strauss, 2019).
Stadium’s broadcast presence comes from its partial ownership by Sinclair Broadcast Group,
owner of 191 local stations in 89 markets (The largest and most diversified television
broadcasting company in the country today, 2020):
“For Stadium, the connection to Sinclair, which owns nearly 200 broadcast TV stations, makes
the tie-in to free TV obvious. The network strikes distribution deals with individual broadcast
networks and station ownership groups — it is on many Sinclair stations (and some not owned
by Sinclair), but is not in every major market — and appears on a digital sub-channel in 86
markets (Strauss, 2019).”
Stadium’s ownership by Sinclair allows for a triple-faceted presentation of rugby league.
Games could be streamed online by Stadium, either on its website or its Facebook or Twitter
accounts, thereby covering the entire country. At the same time, games could be broadcast by
Sinclair’s regional sports networks on cable and Stadium’s over-the-air digital subchannels. That
way, the sport has an audience with both cable consumers and cord-cutters, those who have
foregone traditional cable or satellite packages for digital or broadcast television. Cord-cutters
42
are a growing demographic of media consumers, albeit not one that poses an existential threat to
cable quite yet. This does not mean cord-cutters are not worth paying attention to, however.
AdWeek reports that one-fifth of American households will be cord-cutters by the end of
2021. They cite a graph indicating cord-cutting is trending upward:
(Sutton, 2019)
A partnership between Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports networks and Stadium,
Sinclair’s property, will allow rugby league to hit both sides of the cord-cutting divide, reaching
both cable subscribers and those who have abandoned cable for greener pastures online or over
the air.
Final Plan of Action
The final plan of action is to show the research presented above to executives at Sinclair
as a pitch for showing rugby league across their television and digital properties.
43
Rugby league is poised to become American sports’ next hot import due to its projected
appeal to both young urban professionals, who will enjoy the opportunity to broaden their
sporting horizons, and the greater public at large, who will enjoy its similarity to American
football, America’s most popular sport.
Rugby league’s “hook” will emulate NBC Sports’ established coverage of Premier
League soccer, with young professionals encouraged to start their weekend off early with rugby
league. The entire rugby league blueprint will base itself on Premier League coverage, which is
an established winner that has effectively sold a foreign sports product to an American audience.
44
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