Plan for USA to host 2021 Rugby League World Cup

Moore Sports International has reportedly submitted a bid for the 2021 Rugby League World Cup to be hosted in the USA.

Seen as a way for rugby league to enter the varied American sports landscape, the bid would see finals and pool matches between leading nations Australia, New Zealand and England played in National Football League stadiums while pool matches between smaller nations would be contested in Major League Soccer venues.

Headed by Australian sports promoter Jason Moore, Moore Sports International was the promoter who brought two regular season Major League Baseball matches between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks to Sydney in 2014.

Speaking about the bid to Fox Sports, Moores stated “we’ve submitted a bid for the Rugby League World Cup in 2021 to be in the United States ... a sporting power house, a great gene pool of athletes and not only that, commercially one of the great country’s to take a major sporting event to.”

The United States joins England as the second confirmed bidder for the 2021 World Cup. The Rugby Football League (RFL) confirmed the English bid in June, with another submission expected to come from South Africa.

With the USA a fast-growing market for rugby union - figures supplied by U.S.A. Rugby show the number of youth participants doubled between 2010 and 2015 - staging the Rugby League World Cup in North America would be a significant attempt in internationalising the game.

Moore sees that Americans would enjoy the physicality of rugby league and that it is “an outstanding product for television”.

He suggested that American fans would enjoy because of its similarities to NFL - another “gladiatorial” sport, as he called it, commenting “think of the NFL with no pads, lateral passing and six downs.

“We see rugby league, in this country, appealing to fans of the NFL and college football who are hungry for contact and physicality in sports.”

Commenting on prospects for the bid, Moore concluded “we think we’re going to offer a very compelling and competitive bid, not only financially and commercially but also for game development.

“We’re looking at starting an elite standard professional competition in the United States in a couple of year’s time, which will be a great precursor and lead into the 2021 Rugby League World Cup.

“We have strategically put it into the corridor of time that there are no contact sports in mainstream USA. So we are looking at an April to August timeline. When we can provide the NFL fan with an off season contact sport experience that your use to seeing.”

The winning hosts for the 2021 Rugby League World Cup will be announced in November.

In recent years both the All Blacks and the Wallabies have scheduled rugby union tests in the USA.

Image: Captains and coaches of 2017 Rugby League World Cup teams Australia, New Zealand and Papua Guinea.

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