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Group aims to start rugby league

The next group up to attempt a professional American rugby league is soliciting potential investors, seeking to raise $40 million to launch a newly invented version of the latest Olympic sport.

White Plains, N.Y.-based United World Sports CEO Jon Prusmack envisions an eight-team, bicoastal league competing in super sevens, a patent-pending version of the seven-player rugby format that’s heading for the 2016 Rio Games. Prusmack faces significant challenges, not the least of which are potentially competing plans from USA Rugby and fellow upstart National Rugby Football League, which both have laid the groundwork for pro leagues.

“Everyone is trying to find out, how do you monetize this space? How do you do this? No one knows, and I think we found the formula with super sevens,” said Prusmack, a former defense contracting CEO. His company owns the rights to the Collegiate Rugby Championship and the USA Sevens tournament. Sports marketing consultant Ray Katz helped develop the business plan.

Super sevens resides somewhere between the Olympic sevens format, a sprint-oriented game that lasts just 14 minutes, and traditional 15-man rugby, a grinding 80-minute war of attrition. Prusmack’s new version would still use seven players a side, but contests would last 60 minutes and rosters would be expanded, with on-the-fly substitutions allowed.

Their goal is to retain the Olympic version’s appeal as a bite-sized media unit while making each contest substantial enough to draw in-stadium fans. (Standard sevens is contested in single-site, multiteam tournaments.)

This new model is a problem for USA Rugby, which in 2005 sanctioned the rights to professional sevens to Bill Tatham, founder of Grand Prix Entertainment, who had envisioned a major international professional sevens event. USA Rugby CEO Nigel Melville said that long-dormant endeavor has new life and “there is a real possibility of this happening in the next 12 months.”

“We understand that there is another group trying to create a professional competition in a format not recognized by World Rugby,” Melville said. “USA Rugby only deals with recognized forms of the game, and until any proposed new format is recognized by World Rugby, we cannot support such an initiative.”

Super sevens would be designed to survive without buy-in from the governing body, Prusmack said, and would rely solely on domestic players. Players would make between $800 and $1,000 weekly. “USA Basketball doesn’t sanction the NBA, and in many respects are totally separate entities,” Prusmack said. “This is going to be almost the same thing.”

He wants to launch the league in 2017. Investors are being asked for $10 million to buy into the North American Super 7s Rugby League, which would operate as a single entity. Dan Lyle, a former U.S. national team star and executive vice president of United World Sports, would likely be commissioner, Prusmack said.

Under Prusmack’s plan, the new super sevens league ideally would use Major League Soccer venues, and he thinks MLS ownership groups would be logical franchise operators, too. He said he’s spoken to the Philadelphia Union, Real Salt Lake and San Jose Earthquakes about hosting.

“We’re on board as a venue,” said Earthquakes President Dave Kaval, whose Avaya Stadium hosted a Pacific Nations Cup rugby event in July. He did not rule out investing someday, but not in the near term.

Like all would-be rugby league operators, Prusmack senses opportunity in the sport’s growth. Rugby participation has grown 77 percent in the U.S. from 2009 to 2014, with up to 1.28 million people who played at least once during the year, according to the Sport & Fitness Industry Association. (By comparison, 23.1 million Americans played basketball in 2014). Some rugby events have seen strong attendance and improving TV ratings.

But others, tempted by similar growth indicators to build leagues, have struggled. In addition to Grand Prix’s meager progress so far, this summer the Minnesota-based National Rugby Football League canceled two exhibition matches intended as market-builders for its proposed 15-man league, citing problems in drawing international teams without formal sanctioning.

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