The group hoping to launch a North American pro league in a modified form of rugby has raised enough capital to plan a barnstorming tour in 2018, with hopes of a full league schedule in 2019.
White Plains, N.Y.-based United World Sports has invented a game called Super 7s, which has seven players per side, per the Olympics version, but plays for 48 minutes instead of 14 and allows for live substitutions on an expanded roster of 21 players.
In creating the game, United World Sports CEO Jon Prusmack was looking to retain the Olympic version’s appeal as a fast-paced, bite-sized media unit while making each contest substantial enough to draw in-stadium fans by itself. (Standard sevens is contested in single-site, multiteam tournaments over the course of a weekend.)
Three years after he and marketing consultant Ray Katz developed the concept, Prusmack is now proceeding with Super 7s. He declined to say how much he’s raised, but a source familiar with his efforts say he’s cleared the $5 million mark. In 2015, he said the full-fledged league would require $40 million.
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United World Sports invented Super 7s, with seven players per side like the Olympic version.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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The 2018 six-city showcase tour, whose locations and exact schedule are yet to be announced, will start shortly after the 2018 Rugby Sevens World Cup, July 20-22, in San Francisco. It will serve as a road show for potential investors.
“The six-city tour, I think, is a way to test the market and see what’s going to happen from both a fan experience and a media experience, and an operational experience,” Prusmack said.
The preliminary tour was Super 7s President David Niu’s idea. Before joining United World Sports in April, Niu had been president of AFL Global at the Chinese Arena Football League since 2012, where he helped market the sport to a Chinese audience.
Super 7s is not a World Rugby-recognized discipline and therefore not eligible for sanctioning by USA Rugby. That will discourage players on any national teams from participating because they could be penalized by their governing body if they play in unsanctioned events. Prusmack says he doesn’t need a sanction to succeed and expects collegiate club players to fill the majority of roster spots.
Both Prusmack and David Sternberg, CEO of Rugby International Marketing, the commercial arm of USA Rugby, say the organizations are on friendly working terms. United World Sports currently owns the rights to the annual Las Vegas stop on the HSBC Sevens World Series, a World Rugby property. However, Grand Prix Entertainment, a Los Angeles startup run by William Tatham, has secured the exclusive sanction to the traditional form of sevens in the U.S. from USA Rugby.
On paper at least, Super 7s is hitting a crowded market. At least five organizations have declared their intention to launch pro leagues of one variety or another, including two with official sanctions from USA Rugby. But just one of them has actually put a product on the field, PRO Rugby. And that organization’s future is up in the air after a single season in 2017.
When asked how many rugby leagues can coexist, Prusmack said, “I think the answer to that is: There is no pro rugby in America right now.”
The Super 7s league vision calls for six teams, which would run both a men’s and women’s side, of 21 players each. Prusmack said the talent recruitment, evaluation and draft process is still being developed.
