Oasis, The Stone Roses and Blur, three of Britian’s biggest acts but three massively successful bands that never quite made it in America.

The rock giants were among the most influential groups in British music throughout the 1990’s, but for whatever reason, musical differences or otherwise, these bands were just never able to replicate their domestic success in the world’s biggest media market – America.

The United States. The Home of the brave. The Land of the free. Lovers of all things loud. Jumbotrons, monster trucks and Big Gulp cups. That place.

It’s a wonder why Oasis, The Stone Roses and Blur didn’t make it in America, but it’s also a wonder why rugby and cricket haven’t taken off in the States either, or why it took football decades and repeated attempts to crack the ever so sought American market.

The potential for a sport like rugby in America is enormous. Lucrative television deals, huge sponsorship opportunities, untapped revenue streams, Olympic exposure, big local markets with no major sports teams, and a sport that is the fastest growing team sport in the country with participation rates in excess of 1.3 million players.

So why hasn’t rugby taken off yet? Or maybe more pertinently, why should it?

The question comes in the wake of the failure of North America’s first professional rugby competition PRO Rugby, which is reportedly now defunct just eight months after its first game.

According to American Rugby website, Rugby Today, PRO Rugby alerted all of its players earlier this week that their contracts were being terminated following a meeting in New York last week between PRO Rugby CEO Doug Schoninger and USA Rugby CEO Dan Payne.

However, despite the league-wide terminations, Schoninger insists that he is hopeful that PRO and USA Rugby will be able to resolve their issues within the next 30 days and that the players’ contracts will be reinstated for the final two months of their 12-month contracts.

Schoninger’s statement comes less than a week after the league’s San Francisco Rush folded due to lack of a suitable venue, among other reasons, ultimately reducing a five team league to four.

So after its inaugural season, Pro Rugby has terminated in excess of 103 professional contracts, with more than two months pay still owing, they’ve lost one of their staple teams in the San Francisco Rush, and they’re CEO has directly pointed blame at it’s sanctioning body USA Rugby. Disaster. An utter, unmitigated disaster.

But it’s not the first time a major sport or league has flirted with extinction in it’s inaugural season in the U.S.

In 1967, two professional soccer leagues started in the United States: the FIFA-sanctioned United Soccer Association and the unsanctioned National Professional Soccer League.

While the USA had FIFA sanction, the league’s foreign teams, which were rebranded as American for the summer of 1967, largely viewed the league as little more than a training exercise for their off-season and subsequently most of the imported teams did not field their best players.

The rival NPSL had a two-year national television contract in the U.S. with CBS television where referees were intentionally instructed to whistle fouls and delay play to allow CBS to insert commercials. Genius idea that.

Secondly, the ratings were a big miss for CBS and the NPSL’s television contract was soon terminated. Bill MacPhail, head of CBS Sports at the time, attributed the NPSL’s lack of TV appeal to empty stadiums with few fans and too many foreign players who were unfamiliar to American soccer fans.

So the two league’s merged to form the NASL and after operating on a semi-professional basis for a number of years, the organisers realised that they had to attract star talent in order for the game to really grow.

Consequently, Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Johann Cruyff, Gerd Müller and George Best were all signed to the NASL.

The league averaged over 13,000 fans per game in each season from 1977 to 1983, and its matches were broadcast on network television from 1975 to 1980. The NASL’s most prominent team, the New York Cosmos, averaged over 28,000 fans per season from 1977 to 1982 while having three seasons of the average attendance topping 40,000 spectators per game.

The NASL folded in 1984 due to over-expansion and increasing economic pressure throughout the U.S, but when the MLS looked to increase it’s growth in a similar fashion over 20 years later, they adopted the same model as their predecessors, luring Real Madrid star David Beckham to the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007.

The Beckham effect is extensively documented, but in short, the league grew exponentially with Beckham on their books as the MLS were able to increase the mainstream interest in their league while increasing attendances and expanding the league at a sustainable rate as a direct result of Beckham’s arrival.

Since 2006, the MLS has expanded from 12 teams to 22 teams with the average attendance increasing by over 3,000 fans per game during the Beckham era (2007-2012), and a further 2,885 fans thereafter.

Beckham’s arrival in America also opened the door for a host of other international stars to follow with Theirry Henry, Robbie Keane, Kaka, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Didier Drogba all following the former Manchester United star to the MLS.

Beckham was handed a five-year contract by the MLS worth US$32.5 million in total, or $6.5 million per season, with the ability to make up to US$250 million when personal endorsements, sponsorships and all of his other revenue streams were accounted for.

Similarly, in MMA, the UFC were on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 2000’s until owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, along with Dana White, double downed on a reality show named The Ultimate Fighter that ultimately saved the company.

The show was broadcast on cable network Spike TV and produced one of the best MMA fights in history between Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar in the season finale of series one. The fight put MMA on the map in America and the UFC has been prospering ever since, ruthlessly acquiring talent wherever they can and creating a stable of some of the best MMA fighters on the planet, but more importantly to an American audience, the UFC were able to create stars.

Generally, with a few notable exceptions withstanding, the UFC acquired the best fighters in the world and pitted them against each other to determine the best of the best. The UFC turned the likes of Anderson Silva, Georges St. Pierre and Chuck Liddell into international superstars, while in the process, the company quickly embedded itself as the world’s premiere mixed martial arts promotion.

As for rugby, despite the U.S. men’s sevens team gaining significant coverage during the 2016 Olympics, the sport has never really been able to create the sort of traction that football were able to generate in the 1970’s, or that the UFC were able to create in the mid-2000’s.

American football organisers went after and landed Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and David Beckham. Pro Rugby brought in a 36-year-old Mils Muliaina from Zebre, a 36-year-old Timana Tahu from Rugby League and a 35-year-old Pedrie Wannenburg from Oyonnax.

Fledgling sports in the US need to attract stars, the Dan Carter’s, the Ma’a Nonu’s, the Matt Giteau’s of professional rugby. With all due respect to the aforementioned players that PRO Rugby signed last season, they needed to land a 31-year-old Mils Muliaina instead of a 36-year-old Muliaina.

They needed to land a big time marquee player to generate interest internationally and they didn’t. The MLS paid Beckham an exorbitant amount of money at the LA Galaxy. Pro Rugby might not even pay its players through their inaugural season.

But the question remains, why? Why does rugby need America? Why does America need rugby?

Last year’s Rugby World Cup in England was the biggest Rugby World Cup ever, with investment firm Ernst & Young declaring that the tournament added an estimated £1 billion worth of additive value into the UK economy.

Last year, with strong World Cup performances from teams such as Japan, Asia’s rugby TV viewership increased by 69%. Women’s Rugby has exploded over the last three years from 200,000 players in 2013 to 1.7 million players in 2016.

Participation in the sport in China has increased by 40% in the past year to 76,000 players. Meanwhie Alisports, the sports arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is to invest $100 million into Chinese rugby over the next 10 years as part of an initiative to further grow the game in the region with Chinese Rugby aiming to have one million players, 30,000 coaches and 15,000 match officials by 2021.

International rugby is currently thriving. Rugby is already growing rapidly in untapped markets, why do we need to infiltrate the American market, especially with a league in Pro Rugby that has proven to be so flagrantly inept.

So players who already make hundreds of thousands can make millions? So that rugby can drift further and further away from it’s amateur ideals in favour of an even greater level of professionalism?

We’ve seen the stark divide that increased finances has created between players and supporters in football, why do the same with rugby?

Like Oasis, Blur and the Stone Roses, rugby doesn’t need America to be a great success, it already is.

Jack O’Toole, Pundit Arena

Read More About: dan carter, Dan Payne, Doug Schoinger, ma'a nonu, matt giteau, mils muliaina, pro rugby, San Francisco Rush, usa rugby