“Tales of a Business & Sports Optimist”: Episode 6–Exiting the Echo Chamber

“A thinking partner who isn’t an echo chamber…How many of us dare to have such collaborators” -Margaret Hefferman

I’ve always appreciated those who break the norms. No matter what their space is, anyone who can carve out a niche that was never considered before is impressive to me.?

Whether it was Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, Warren Buffett, or other leaders of the day, I’ve taken an interest in those who show us what we might not have previously thought possible.

Maybe that’s why I’ve gravitated to rugby and the business side of this sport–since it’s most certainly not a norm here in the US on both the sport and commercial sides. Regardless, I appreciate the challenge that the Utah Warriors and the MLR have offered me given the unique “never been done before” elements we do on a daily basis.?

Successful entrepreneur and business executive Margaret Heffernan was quoted as saying in a 2012 TED talk titled “Dare to Disagree” that “A thinking partner who isn’t an echo chamber…How many of us dare to have such collaborators.”?

An echo chamber, according to the Oxford Dictionaries is “an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.”

I would venture to say that Jordan, Woods, Brady, Buffett, and other great innovators of our time would all likely agree with Heffernan, that we should all “dare to have such collaborators,” because they knew that we all need others who can challenge the “echo chambers” of our lives.?

In other words, sometimes doing things differently or challenging the “norm” can and should be welcomed if we are to achieve success at the level we desire.?

Over the last five years, the Utah Warriors and Major League Rugby (MLR) have, in my experience, challenged the norm and strived to be a “collaborator” on a local, national, and even a global scale.?

To date, I’ve recounted the early start-up and growing pains we navigated as a team and league in 2018 and 2019 which was followed by the global pandemic in 2020. And in the two most recent episodes I shared how success and failure might be misleading as we came to learn in 2021 and 2022.?

To many in the world of professional sports, these last five years of the MLR and the Warriors might seem trivial. In fact, the MLR’s annual operating budget is likely the cost of some NFL teams’ full marketing budgets. So it’s no wonder that many inside the North American sport and entertainment sector, and even some in international rugby circles, might have overlooked the MLR and what we’ve been able to achieve in just a short five years.

But if I’ve learned one thing over these last five years, and on the eve of the Warriors and the MLR’s sixth season, it's the overarching need for the sport of rugby to evolve past its own echo chamber of relevance and near-sightedness. And above all, I’ve come to learn and see clearly how the MLR as a group of passionate partnered teams, and the Utah Warriors in our own regard, can help push this global shift in perspective.?

Rugby’s Echo Chamber

Historically, and as many people know, rugby has been played since 1823 when William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and famously ran with it during a football match at the Rugby School in England. The international governing entity of World Rugby was founded in 1886 and has grown to over 129 member “unions” commonly known as national governing bodies for the sport in their respective countries.?

But it wasn’t until over 100 years later that the sport of rugby would become professional in the year 1995. By that time other sports had become professional and gotten the headstart well before rugby, including soccer (football), American football, basketball, baseball, cricket, Aussie rules football, and even rugby’s fraternal twin, rugby league.?

As such, rugby’s era of professionalism is a mere 28 years old, which is a far cry from the decades, if not centuries of sports that have been professional in their respective sports. Said very differently, rugby is just the awkward teenager relative to the other global and more mature professional sports.?

For just under three decades the sport of rugby has moved from an amateur game to a professional one in an effort to scale itself into the global power that the sport deserves to become. But for that relatively short period of time rugby has not, on and off the field, yet achieved this potential. Whatever one’s perspective as to the reason, the facts remain that the game’s overall struggle with growth has been seen in every “rugby-playing” country and in every top-tier professional competition.?

We’ve seen countless iterations of Southern Hemisphere professional competitions, while the Northern Hemisphere has evolved and similarly struggled to find its groove, exemplified most recently by the public failures of the Wasps and the Warriors in the English Rugby Premiership. These struggles and the broader global realignments of competitions are representative of professional rugby’s awkward and stunted growth, even in “tier-one” rugby nations.?

Meanwhile, in the MLR, we’ve had our own fair share of struggles mixed with success. We’ve gone from seven founding teams in 2018 to twelve with a thirteenth coming online in 2024. But we’ve had three teams fall out of the MLR for various reasons along the way. It’s been far from a perfect growth trajectory in North America as well.?

In other words, the global professional game of rugby is a far cry from the mature version of a globally dominant sport that it can become and should already be.?

Sometimes those of us in the rugby world get so used to passionately talking about the sport that we forget that the professional game is still relatively young and maturing. And in this way, we create an echo chamber of thoughts, ideas, and systems within the global rugby landscape.?

The greatest fate of this echo chamber is that while we talk and act like we’re “growing the game” inside of a myopically focused community, all we’re actually doing is increasing the noise inside of that chamber. In other words, we’re creating rugby’s version of confirmation bias where we’re validating our own core beliefs, shouting down dissent and innovation in the spirit of tradition.

To better frame this thought allow me to compare rugby to soccer (football). The 2019 Rugby World Cup relative to its football compatriot in the most recent 2022 World Cup in Qatar saw the following numbers:

When talking to many in the rugby community, you’d think that we’re far more relevant and sizely than the numbers above demonstrate. Clearly, rugby has a strong base, but there is so much more potential for the sport when you consider that it has yet to truly penetrate the Western Hemisphere and wider Asian markets, specifically the Chinese market, as well as the very complex and competitive North American sports and entertainment market.?

If it is to truly grow to its full maturity rugby will require developing unified strategies that get the sport outside of its own myopic echo chamber and the oft-unspoken tribal factions.

But above all, and I believe this following statement genuinely lacks my own personal bias, if rugby is going to fully live up to its global potential, it will require finally “cracking” the North American landscape. While the above numbers offer a relative perspective of rugby to soccer, those numbers fail to acknowledge rugby in relation to the landscape of the North American sports and entertainment market.?

The North American sports market size is measured at just over $83B annually with a broader economic impact of over $700B annually just in the US. And with over 40% of Americans reporting that they watch 2-5 hours of sports every week, it’s no surprise that this market is so competitive to build a sports and entertainment business inside of. Not to mention a sport like rugby, despite it being one of the world’s largest sports, is still somewhat regarded as a “fringe” or “challenger” sport, in general, by most in North America.?

In other words, the global game of rugby is still trying to find its feet professionally and will require a greater and more innovative approach if its to break into the North American market. To assume what has supposedly “worked” (or not worked) in other rugby-playing countries will work elsewhere is presumptuous not only for the development of the other international leagues but especially as it relates to how rugby will “crack” the USA when you factor in the size and competitiveness of the North American market.

The Vision

Since our inception, the Warriors’ stated goal is to build the epicenter of North American rugby. And it’s been the MLR’s goal to create one of the world’s top professional rugby competitions in order to continue growing and developing this exciting sport in North America.

The MLR’s owners as a whole have been committed to growing rugby and have a history of philanthropic contributions to the sport in North America that long predates the MLR. But it’s not all altruism to be fair and to be candid, it can’t be if the sport is to truly grow. Said bluntly, increasing adoption of the sport of rugby in North America is in the MLR’s long-term commercial interest.?

Increasing adoption of the sport will not only bring in more ticket buyers, eyeballs on TV, and sources for strong commercial partnerships, but more people playing and loving the sport will help capture more talent and drive more resources into the game, improving talent development pipelines. As such, on the performance side of the game, the MLR’s interests in this regard have been and are 100% aligned with World Rugby, USA Rugby, Rugby Canada, and other rugby community stakeholders, both local and national.

With the recent announcement of the 2031 and 2033 Rugby World Cups in the USA, there has never been a more pivotal time to influence the long-discussed growth of North American rugby, but more importantly, the development of rugby overall to reach new and unprecedented levels of commercial and sporting success globally.

The future success of not just the game in North America demands a united and “fresh” plan to work towards success in 2031 and 2033. Given the importance of the North American sports and entertainment market in influencing and supporting global sports, the entire global ecosystem of rugby stakeholders needs to be aligned in order to realize the success that is possible.

If the above alignment is achieved, the MLR believes rugby’s North American and global statures will exponentially grow beyond even the most bullish of us we believe is possible. Without this alignment, the MLR believes further rugby and non-rugby community confusion and discord will occur to all parties' detriment. In other words, we’ll stay inside our echo chamber with all of the parochial glory that comes with it [sarcasm intended].?

MLR & Warriors Impact

The Warriors and the MLR have been and are making a significant impact on the growth of the game in North America over the last five years.?

Over the last 5 years, MLR owners have invested over $230M in developing the league, teams, development pathways, and more. This figure doesn’t include the multiple non-profits that each team has established to develop grassroots rugby in their respective markets or the significant personal contributions they have made to support local organizations.

Collectively, the MLR is projected to invest close to?$1B to grow the game by the time the 2031 Rugby World Cup comes to the USA, and again this figure doesn’t include the non-profits and grassroots programs each MLR team is operating separately.

As part of the MLR’s ongoing commitment to support the North American game and the member governing bodies of USA Rugby and Rugby Canada, the league has also committed its own financial resources to support these entities that are financially constrained due to previous bankruptcy and dwindling budgets still impacted by COVID and other factors. We’ve always believed that what is good for USA Rugby and Rugby Canada is good for the MLR and vice versa.?

For example, most recently the MLR and the partner teams donated $300K to support USA Rugby’s effort to qualify for the 2023 Rugby World Cup back in October of 2022. The MLR also funded the entire Rugby World Cup bid process by committing $2M+ on behalf of USA Rugby, which was still recovering from bankruptcy at the time. The MLR is and has been committed to supporting the North American national governing bodies and their growth and success.

And while these financial numbers are important to note, the true commercial metric for the league’s growth is and always will be the expansion of the MLR.?

As mentioned above, the MLR started with seven founding teams in 2018 and quickly grew to nine in 2019 and then twelve in 2020. Ahead of the 2023 season, the MLR sits at thirteen members with twelve competing this season.?

The league has had its ups and downs with this growth, just like Major League Soccer (MLS) saw in its early days with teams contracting and leaving the competition for various reasons, but on the sum, in just over five years, the MLR has almost doubled in size–something that no other North American professional league has realized in its existence, not even the MLS.?

And with the recent additions of two of North America’s top markets in Chicago and Miami with ownership groups who are not only passionate about this league and the sport but similarly successful in their own respective business pursuits, the MLR is going from strength to strength despite the early growing pains of any business, particularly a sports and entertainment business inside of the world’s most competitive market for such.?

A market as riddled with sports as North America requires a strong media strategy and the MLR has grown that footprint of accessibility to the sport of rugby as no other competition has before. Yes, rugby has been broadcast in the US for quite some time, but it's typically behind a paywall or an “added feature” on a cable or satellite package. In other words, historically you really have to want to watch rugby if you’re going to find it.?

But since the MLR’s inception, the league has broadcast an average of approximately 70 MLR matches on national and local broadcast channels every year. And with 106 regular and post-season games slated for the upcoming season, this number is rising every year.?

Cumulatively, through the MLR national television broadcasts, as well as the hundreds of games broadcast locally and regionally through each respective MLR team’s broadcast partners, the league and its partner teams, have provided access to the sport to over 250M homes locally, regionally and nationally over the last five years.?

On top of these number of games, the MLR has similarly showcased its championship series and the sport of rugby on national television channels like CBS and Fox and will do the same again this year with the MLR championship being featured on Fox on July 8th.

The access to the MLR content hasn’t all just been over broadcast television as the league launched its own “over the top” (OTT) platform to showcase all MLR games and other MLR and rugby-centric content.?

This platform, called The Rugby Network (TRN), was launched in 2021 and has since garnered over 120K subscribers and has featured not only MLR content but USA and Rugby Canada national team and collegiate rugby content as well as other professional league content from around the world. TRN, for its part, is getting the sport free to anyone with access to the internet, including a rapidly growing international audience that is interested in seeing the sport of rugby grow in North America.?

On the Warriors’ side, we’ve seen similar strategic success by developing a best-in-class broadcast platform that includes not only a linear television package that is free to watch locally in the Sinclair-owned KMYU, but we’ve also partnered with AT&T Sports Network (ATTSN) to regionally simulcast six Warriors’ games live throughout the intermountain west covering six states. ATTSN will also rebroadcast the Warriors’ games over 100+ times on their respective intermountain channels in the lead-up to Utah Jazz or Colorado Rockies games.?

This strong television presence is complemented by an added local OTT partnership with KSLSports.com, one of Utah’s largest sports and media companies, as well as a radio presence with ESPN 700 & 960, one of Utah’s largest sports radio stations. All of these platforms are meant to help the Utah Warriors become a household name in Utah and throughout the region.?

This overall local and national broadcast success for the MLR and the Warriors has offered more exposure to the game for kids, adults, and others to help the MLR, and the sport of rugby, carve out space in this ultra-competitive North American landscape. And in so doing, all of these broadcast offerings are designed to help the sport of rugby exit the “echo chamber” by inviting and involving others inside of this passionate rugby community.?

All of the above financial investments to the sport and the league, including the MLR’s support of national governing bodies, and the league’s broadcast investment over the last five years have shown the MLR’s commitment to the growth of the game in North America, while also supporting the efforts to grow the relevance of the sport outside of itself.?

Rugby Growth

While the MLR’s growth has been impressive the true and lasting impact and measurement of success of this business will always be the number of boys and girls that come to learn and play the game of rugby on account of the league’s efforts.?

It's estimated the MLR and our partner teams have introduced the game to over 50,000 kids in just 2023 alone, and over 200,000 boys and girls since the league’s inception. Through the various different MLR “Grassroots Development Incentives” that are offered to each MLR team and the ongoing youth programs that each team and the MLR are operating, it's expected that the league will introduce 1M kids to the sport of rugby in the next three years with an estimated 5M+ being introduced to rugby by 2031.?

In truth, as much as this grassroots development plan is expected to support commercial benefit to the MLR and the partner teams, these efforts are meant to support the core altruistic goals of the MLR to develop top domestic rugby talent in support of USA Rugby and Rugby Canada.?

In the five years of operation of the MLR, the league has supported the development of the following numbers of players:

These numbers don’t include the hundreds of domestic-eligible players in U18 academy set-ups and on Development Teams spread across the MLR, many of which have already gone on to represent the USA at the U18 level or with the USA Falcons.?

Five years ago, prior to the MLR, these numbers were scant, to say the least. We expect that this base of North American talent will continue to develop as the millions of kids who are introduced to the sport make rugby their “sport of choice” and commit to an MLR and USA Rugby or Rugby Canada development pathway. In the end, the growth of this pathway will add strength and success to the US and Canadian national teams over the coming years.?

The Utah Warriors for our part have supported the introduction of the sport to over 10,000 kids in Utah just in 2023 with over 2,500 participating in our Jr. Warriors competition or clinics. And with an increasing number of civic parks and recreation department partnerships,? this number will continue to climb exponentially.?

And the Warriors’ own U18 Academy team has promoted multiple USA U18 players and supported over a dozen players to earn college scholarships while also furthering their rugby development inside of the Warriors’ pathway.?

MLR is Leading the Charge

In order to achieve the above-mentioned alignment needed ahead of the 2031 and 2033 Rugby World Cups the MLR, including the front office and members of the MLR Board, are working actively with USA Rugby, Rugby Canada, and World Rugby and other related key stakeholders to ensure a successful and positive plan can be put in place ahead of those tournaments.?

More details will be released once they become available. Needless to say, I’m optimistic and excited about the possibilities being discussed presently.?

But in the meantime, with the global game of rugby undergoing an overall tectonic shift in the game’s on and off-the-field structures, there are plenty of opportunities for those of us in the rugby community to exit our self-imposed echo chamber. In other words, as rugby continues to “grow up” and get past this "teenage" phase there are countless skills and traits that the sport can develop in the coming years to become come the mature global power it deserves to be.?

Again, when we consider the echo chamber that is the broader rugby community the questions we should be asking are 1) How do we get outside of this echo chamber? 2) What will get newer and younger people coming to love the sport of rugby? The two questions are essentially the same if you think about it.?

The MLR is having to ask and answer these questions in order to try and compete and gain relevance in the most fiercely competitive sports market on earth. And by nature of these questions, the MLR has developed what I believe is the “newest” audience of ardent rugby fans.?

With this growing “new” audience and with the model of the MLR being focused on partnering with our domestic governing unions to grow the game, I believe the league is setting the stage for other top-tier professional rugby competitions to follow suit.?

While most professional rugby was originally and is still somewhat tied to the governing body of the sport in that country, the MLR is building a model that is aligned with the governing body through collaboration and mutually-aligned incentives. The MLR’s goal and vision is to innovate the commercial model in such a way that it feeds the development pathway faster and more effectively than all other previous models before it so that USA Rugby and Rugby Canada stand to benefit on the international level.?

Summary

I’ve been asked why I would write and share my story, the story of the Warriors, and some of the story of the MLR as I have. The reason was simple: this story is unique and it's a story that anyone who’s been involved in business or sports can connect with.

The lean years of a start-up business. The struggles of learning from our mistakes and supposed successes. These are all elements with which anyone, rugby affiliated or not, can resonate because it's a shared experience or a shared emotion.?

In other words, I’ve shared my story of the Warriors and the MLR’s last five years in order to help our narrative exit the echo chamber. We’ve needed these experiences to show the rugby community, but especially, the non-rugby community that there is so much potential in this sport in North America. And we’ve needed to do it in a way that helps anyone and everyone realize the amazing work our Warriors’ staff members and the amazing MLR partners are doing to raise the tide for not just those who play or who are passionate about the sport but for those who haven’t yet enjoyed the opportunity of falling in love with rugby.?

That’s why I wrote this series, to exit the echo chamber.

I’d like to be considered a “collaborator” to use Heffernan’s term, and I would hope everyone inside of the rugby community would strive to be similar by being the best possible “thinking partner” that we all need in order to become the best possible version of ourselves.?We can and should challenge the norms and we can and should see that North American rugby, and the sport in general, is destined for great things if we can strive to operate unitedly outside of our parochial communities inside of the rugby echo chamber.

The MLR and the Warriors have carved out a successful beachhead in North America and both are looking to continue leading the growth of the competition in order to innovate and push the sport to grow outside of itself. The league has grown from a league of seven teams to almost double that in a short period of time and the league is on the cusp of scaling demonstrably over the next five years with the anticipation of the 2031 and 2033 Rugby World Cups.

But above all, while rugby continues to “grow up” globally the MLR is well on its way to creating a wider audience that helps us exit the rugby echo chamber by introducing the sport to newer and younger fans in earnest, both on and off the field.

While other competitions are just now realizing that the historical strategies of doing “more rugby to grow rugby” doesn't entirely solve the issue of developing new fans, particularly in countries where rugby isn’t a well-known sport, like the USA, the MLR is in a strong position to innovate new marketing, media, and partnerships strategies that will inherently help with the recognition of and the growth of the sport in North America, and dare I say, even globally.

The future of rugby in North America is beyond bright. It’s blinding. But it will only achieve that radiance if the entire rugby community realizes that the sport needs new and different strategies in order to gain the market relevance that it requires in order to sustain and scale itself into not only a North American but a global sports power. And it’s my commitment and goal to ensure that the Warriors and the MLR are involved in and spearheading this evolution in partnership with all who will join us.?

I look forward to working with you and the many others presently involved in helping the sport of rugby exit its echo chamber. Once this takes place, the growth will come fast and furious. And from that growth will come new tales that you and I will all be able to tell about being a sports and business optimist.

If you’ve made it this far and read all six episodes of this series, and you're curious to see what all the “hubbub” is about, please feel free to message me directly if you’d like to come and enjoy a Utah Warriors’ home game on my dime. I’d love to host you and show you in person how amazing the Warriors, the MLR, and the sport of rugby truly are.?

Signing off for now. Thanks for reading! Go Warriors!?

If you’d like to read the “Tales of the Sports & Business Optimist” prologue and the other episodes please CLICK HERE.