The Toronto Wolfpack didn’t just secure a promotion to RFL’s Super League when they dispatched the Featherstone Rovers 24-6 at Lamport Stadium in October.

They secured new opportunities for the entire sport.

That win kicked off a series of moves that stakeholders hope will reshape their home stadium, their league and RFL’s worldwide business prospects in 2020.

After all, the Wolfpack’s value to the U.K.-based Rugby Football League isn’t just that they’re the circuit’s first North American team. It’s that they’re based in one of the continent’s biggest media markets, and have qualified for Super League as RFL prepares to negotiate broadcast rights for 2021 and beyond.

If the Wolfpack had lost to Featherstone and spent yet another year in the second division, the club could have survived without expensive upgrades to Lamport Stadium’s locker rooms and scoreboards. But with a higher level of competition looming, the Wolfpack will likely invest several million dollars to bring the city-owned stadium up to Super League standards.

And marquee free-agent signing Sonny Bill Williams almost certainly wouldn’t have left New Zealand to join a second-division team in Toronto, but the Wolfpack’s promotion enabled them to offer enough pay and platform to lure the long-time All Black to Canada.

But with the Super League’s biggest name playing in its biggest market, advocates of expanding rugby league’s footprint say the Wolfpack have brought the entire sport to the brink of an unprecedented opportunity.

“Toronto is the most important brand in our sport right now,” said Alex Simmons, a sports marketing analyst and host of Rugby AM, a rugby league TV show. “We’re heading for a TV deal in 2021, and we need a North American broadcast deal. The only way we can do that is if the Wolfpack lift the Challenge Cup or the Super League trophy.”

The Wolfpack entered 2019 with a new coach — Brian McDermott took over from Paul Rowley — and a mandate to make good on their second attempt to qualify for Super League. Last October they lost the second division’s grand final, the lavishly titled Million-Pound Game, to the London Broncos, forcing them to spend a second expensive year in a lower tier. Covering visiting teams’ expenses dented the Wolfpack’s bottom line, and club officials acknowledged the team would only become profitable once it reached the Super League, with its better-funded clubs and richer revenue sharing.

McDermott’s squad did its job on the field, going 28-0-1 and averaging just under 7,300 spectators for home games.

Off the field, the club hired veteran sports executive Bob Hunter to take over from owner David Argyle as the team’s chairman and CEO. He says boosting average home attendance beyond 8,000 per game is a realistic short-term goal given the club’s steady success and growing local presence.

“If we can transition those casual fans into ardent fans, we have an opportunity to grow our fan base significantly,” Hunter told the Star in October.

The club doesn’t expect Williams to turn the Wolfpack into an audience-drawing Super League title contender on his own. Indeed, the Wolfpack spent the early phases of rugby league’s brief off-season reinforcing its roster. They re-signed veteran standouts Liam Kay and Blake Wallace, and added proven Super League performers Brad Singleton and James Cunningham. Overseas news reports even had them pursuing Manu Tuilagi from England’s national rugby union team, and Australian rugby league star Latrell Mitchell.

Still, much of the responsibility for expanding the Wolfpack’s mainstream reach in Toronto, and the RFL’s presence outside northern England, will rest on the broad shoulders of the 34-year-old Williams.

While the RFL’s long-term plans include gaining traction in New York, Boston and Ottawa, McDermott says the league first needs to conquer London, where most sports fans prefer 15-player rugby union over 13-player rugby league. The distinction means little to most North American viewers, but it’s critical to aficionados of either version of rugby, and part of what makes crossover players such as Williams so rare.

“It’s a different sport,” said McDermott, who signed a five-year contract extension in late November. “It’s a bit like comparing pool to snooker. On the surface it looks similar, but they’re very, very different.”

In Williams, rugby league experts see a player capable of transcending intra-sport squabbles. His long track record in Australia’s National Rugby League and with New Zealand’s national team, the Kiwis, make him famous in rugby league’s northern England heartland. But a rugby union career spanning 58 tests and two World Cups with the All Blacks raised his profile in London and beyond.

He has also forged endorsement deals with adidas, a sports-centric sponsor you’d expect in his portfolio, and BMW, the kind of aspirational brand that Simmons says rugby league clubs have struggled to attract as sponsors.

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And, Simmons points out, Williams gives the Wolfpack a player famous enough to attract Toronto’s sports celebrities to home games.

Possibly.

“You’re going to see Sonny Bill courtside talking to Drake one day,” Simmons said. “If S.B.W. met Drake and said, ‘Do you want to come watch me play?’ and Drake rocked up to Lamport? Imagine. That would singlehandedly transform that brand.”