The US pro league has big signings in the bag, a trip to Vegas on the horizon – and political and financial challenges galore

The third season of Major League Rugby will kick off in February with five games on three days over two weekends in America’s No1 party city: Las Vegas.

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As a PR move it’s as bold as San Diego signing the World Cup-winning All Blacks centre Ma’a Nonu, like Sonny Bill Williams a major star at the end of his career but choosing to play union in North America rather than switch to league.

Conversations with key MLR stakeholders, however, reveal a sense that bigger gambles are about to be made.

Glendale, the Denver-area team who played a formative role in launching MLR, reached the first championship game and recently rebranded as the Colorado Raptors, have signed their own ex-All Black, the wing Rene Ranger, as well as the former Australia centre Digby Ioane.

But multiple sources in the league and the wider US game, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Raptors were set to withdraw from MLR by the end of the year. Sources described complicated relationships between team owners and a sizeable potential problem should the Raptors depart.

The Raptors do not just own Infinity Park, the first rugby specific stadium in the US. Arising from their prominent role in moves to create a league before and after the failure of PRO Rugby, which lasted one season in 2016, they own significant intellectual property including the Major League Rugby name. Sources said the Raptors could form a new league in competition with a renamed MLR. Colorado and MLR did not respond to requests for comment.

A potential Colorado exit will be the chief concern to greet the league’s new commissioner, due to be announced soon to succeed Dean Howes after, sources said, teams including Colorado moved to change the man at the top.

But as Howes, a former Real Salt Lake Major League Soccer executive, pointed out earlier this year, other pressing problems are of a kind common to start-up leagues outside the US big time.

MLR is entering the final year of a three-year TV deal with CBS Sports. New announcements are due soon.

The 2019 final attracted just over 500,000 viewers on CBS but crowds remain small: the double champion Seattle Seawolves and San Diego Legion, beaten finalists in year two, attract the biggest regular-season attendances at around 4,000. Other teams, including the loudly ballyhooed Rugby United New York, lag behind, many playing in minor league baseball parks they struggle to halfway fill.

Rugby ATL is an expansion team that will enter in 2020 alongside Old Glory DC, in Washington, and the New England Free Jacks. In mid-November, the Atlanta team announced the surprise departure of general manager James Walker, one of the forces behind Tiger Rugby sevens. Sources said the decision was the result of tensions in the management group.

The strength of the new teams will be a key test of MLR’s ambitions. In two seasons so far most teams, stocked with American and Canadian talent, have been relatively evenly matched. Toronto Arrows and New York, expansion teams in year two, both made the playoffs at their first attempt. Some sources expressed concern that three new teams may test the depth of the pool of domestic players.

If Colorado do not withdraw or another team takes their place, the new teams will enter a competition split into six-strong eastern and western conferences. More teams wait in the wings, including the Los Angeles Loyals, voted in instead of the LA Coast operation which announced itself in July 2018. The Loyals, driven by Australian investment, have not announced a formal entry date.

Dallas is another team in waiting, its management group with links to the Mavericks NBA franchise, which is owned by the billionaire Mark Cuban, famously a rugby fan and player.

Sources described frustration among owners that Dallas has been a voting part of MLR from the start but has not fielded a team. Others suggested the Austin franchise, winless in year two and now rebranded as the Herd, could cross Texas to Dallas.

An attempt to move the Austin franchise to Columbus, Ohio, which hosted a team in PRO Rugby, recently fell through, sources said. With Houston SaberCats one of the more established MLR operations, now with their own rugby specific home, Texas is unlikely to host three teams.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Glendale, in blue, take on Seattle in the first Major League Rugby championship game, in San Diego in 2018. Photograph: Colt Cannon/MLR

Sources also said preliminary moves were being made towards establishing a team in Chicago, a city that has hosted top international games and where the Chicago Lions club are building an impressive new facility.

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Nonu, Ioane and Ranger will join New York signings Ben Foden and Matthieu Bastareaud in MLR, marquee former internationals in squads nonetheless subject to a $500,000 salary cap that is dramatically low in comparison to wage bills in Super Rugby, the Gallagher Premiership and the Top 14.

Sources voiced concern that MLR will soon face problems in governing its cap similar, if smaller in scale, to those consuming the English game, where champions Saracens have been hit with a significant fine and points reduction. Others said the former internationals were attracted by the chance to live and play in the US and were not collecting outsized cheques.

The former England flanker Steffon Armitage is no longer among such players: he was announced as a signing by San Diego, only for the deal to be dropped over the player’s conviction in France for sexual assault.

Over all this, there are also money problems at USA Rugby, the national union which earlier this year announced a strategic plan with MLR. Emergency board and congress meetings were due to be held last week.