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Women’s Elite Rugby looking to send USA Eagles to the next level
By Joe Harvey
When the Eagles were beaten 61-21 by England at the start of a winless WXV 1 campaign, the gap between the two nations had never been starker.
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Scheduled to play the Red Roses in the opening game of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in England, the USA’s domestic players will come into the competition fresh from their first season as paid players.
Next year WER will pay 180 players from across the United States to play rugby across a five-month season.
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While still finalising their player compensation package, organising team branding and television rights, the new competition is set to supercharge women’s rugby in the country.
Eight years out from hosting the World Cup themselves and hot on the heels of the nation’s women’s team winning a bronze medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, the timing of this evolution could be perfect.
After it was identified that the pay-to-play model was no longer sustainable, the decision was made to evolve the Women’s Premier League (WPL).
The pinnacle level of women’s rugby in America since 2009, WER hopes that its player-centric approach will turn the competition into a rich breeding ground of talent for the years to come.
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Using the blueprint provided by the WPL’s 15-year existence, six teams – based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, and Twin Cities – are being developed from existing clubs.
Concluding their player declaration period at the end of October and due to announce the coaches who will take charge of the teams, women’s rugby in America is about to start bridging the gap between them and the old guard.
Led by Dr Jessica Hammond-Graf, WER’s president believes that the new competition forms a vital part of the constantly evolving rugby landscape in America.
“If you think about rugby in the US, you have MLR, the professional men’s, and you have PR7s, the professional men’s and women’s sevens, and professional women’s rugby was missing from the ecosystem,” Hammond-Graf said.
Today marks the official launch of Women’s Elite Rugby (WER), the first professional women’s rugby league in the United States. Follow along as we usher in the next evolution of American rugby. #WERbold pic.twitter.com/DLAtoOA8pv
— Women’s Elite Rugby (WER) (@rugbyevolved) April 10, 2024
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“We see this as being able to help USA Rugby and World Rugby drive rugby in the US, increase the level of competition globally to help the USA compete at a higher level at WXV and the World Cup.
“We see ourselves fitting in well to that pipeline. We are a collaborative group. There is no sense in going rogue. We want to make sure that while we are creating this entertainment product in rugby, we are good stewards of the game.”
Hammond-Graf is the person charged with establishing just the fourth professional women’s rugby competition in the world.
With over two decades’ experience as a Division 1 college athletics administrator, Hammond-Graf oversaw a multi-million dollar budget for 19 years at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Those years of knowledge have already lent themselves to the establishment of WER.
Appointed president of WPL’s board at the time players and organisers recognised that the existing model could not work for much longer, Hammond-Graf has spearheaded the development of the new-look competition.
Already WER has had a taste of success.
Hosting the Legacy Cup in September, which was broadcast on RugbyPass TV, the Colorado Gray Wolves beat All Blues Women’s Rugby 31-27 and set the standard of what is to come in 2025.
Adopting the single entity structure, the league will own and operate each team and will have full-time front-office staff to take on team administrative responsibilities.
But that is all easier said than done.
To get the ball rolling for professionalism Hammond-Graf and her dedicated team have secured private investment – is in stark contrast to Premiership Women’s Rugby (now a limited company), Super Rugby Women’s and Super Rugby Aupiki, who have all been bankrolled by their unions – thanks to a pre-seed round of funding earlier in 2024 and a seed round of funding that opened in the summer.
“Women’s sport gets valued on where we are today and what the return on investment is today,” Hammond-Graf said.
“If you are not making the same as the Chicago Bulls, they are not going to back it.
“It is about finding those partners who truly believe in what women’s sports can do and are in it for the long haul.
“We strongly believe and stand behind this notion that partners who get in at the ground level and are willing to make that infusion, are going to see a big return when we get to year three and year four.
“For us, Destination Sports have done that. We haven’t even had a season yet and they have come in and said, ‘We believe in what you are doing and want to be part of it’.
“It is partners like that that see the long-term commercial value.”
In the past 12 months, the USA has seen an explosion in the popularity of women’s sport.
Basketball has been at the epicentre of much of this, with the NCAA women’s March Madness tournament final viewed by 18.7 million domestic viewers as Caitlin Clark and Kamilla Cardoso went blow-for-blow.
It was the most-watched basketball game in the US since 2019.
This spike in attention continued into the 2024 WNBA season, where there was an all-time record of over 54 million unique viewers across all its broadcasters, a 48 per cent increase in attendance from the season prior and nearly two billion video views across its social media platforms.
You then throw in record attendances across the NWSL season, along with NBC and Peacock’s 34.7 million viewers on the day that USA women’s rugby sevens team sealed their dramatic bronze, and the future certainly seems bright.
“Launching the league in 2024 and having our first season in 2025, we could have picked any year, but we purposely set this aggressive timeline for ourselves because we believe now is the time to take advantage of the way that women’s sport is trending,” Hammond-Graf said.
“The Women’s Rugby World Cup final sold thousands of tickets in a couple of hours. We would be silly not to take this on and make it happen.
“With the US hosting the Rugby World Cup, we have this amazing trajectory, we have this infrastructure, this amazing transfusion of eyes on women’s sports, corporate sponsors looking to get a large return on investment and we have a runway with that.”
In contrast to the boardroom warfare that takes place with other American sports, WER is taking a player-centric approach to how they do business.
Working collaboratively with a players’ committee, the league is putting the finishing touches to their player compensation package and even extended the declaration period for athletes to express their interest in playing pro rugby next season.
Athletes are allowed to express preferred locations – something which was inspired by the National Women’s Soccer League’s agreement with the NWSL Players Association to give athletes more autonomy over where they ply their trade.
Taking the best aspects from established sports competitions, there will be a noticeably different feel to how WER does its business.
Hammond-Graf is keen to promote players as role models with real connection to where they play, and to both inspire and empower the next generation of athletes.
As part of her Doctor of Education degree, Hammond-Graf penned the dissertation, Utilising Sport as a Vehicle for the Process of Empowerment for Women.
Accounts from numerous retired women’s rugby players from the midwest explain how the sport positively impacted individuals, challenged male stereotypes and thrive in their professional lives.
This full worldview will set WER apart from anything else we have seen before it.
Rugby’s breakthrough into the mainstream in the USA has already provided insight into what this could look like.
Still riding the success of her meteoric rise to fame during the Eagles’ bronze medal push, Ilona Maher has formed a part of the American consciousness as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.
In an interview with Access Hollywood that has gathered over one million views on Instagram alone, Maher emotionally spoke out about body positivity, putting emphasis on the fact that women can be muscular and feminine at the same time.
Combining that social focus with elite, high-performance sport is undoubtedly an attractive proposition for anyone wanting to make a long-term impact in the sport.
Sione Fukofuka’s WXV squad of 30 was comprised of 15 players from PWR clubs, five are contracted to Emilie Bydwell’s sevens team and 10 came from WPL teams.
Playing at such varied levels of competition and without regular touchpoints, it was always going to be an uphill battle in Canada.
Should the standard of rugby increase as a result of WER, that number of overseas-based players is likely to shrink too and with collegiate rugby programmes continually developing, the talent available will only get greater.
The opportunity is endless.
“We want our athletes to play in front of their families, friends, be stalwarts of their community and build rugby as an entertainment product,” Hammond-Graf said.
“We are creating a space where we want to be known for rugby in the US and create the highest level of competition that we can.
“It doesn’t just come from the competition. It also comes with the support systems that athletes have in place and what athletes can expect from being a professional in the US.
“How we can support them medically, physically, mentally – those elements, so they can just focus on rugby.
“Where we start on day one will be a lot different to where we are in year five. That is our goal.”
