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All sports have their major championship. There’s the FIFA World Cup, the Super bowl, the MLB World Series, the list goes on and on. For rugby, this major event is the Rugby World Cup. In his article the Economic Impact of the Rugby World Cup, Zach Bergson, a journalist at the National Center for Business, focuses on the benefits of this truly global event. By looking at this article, one can see how the Rugby World Cup has benefited cities from the surplus of tourism, inexpensive infrastructure, and overall income from the event. If it has worked out so well for other countries in the world, the United States should really look into hosting in the future years.
According to the Financial Times, rugby is fastest growing team sport in the United States right now, gaining more than 1.4 million players. But the United States is one of the last ones on board. Rugby is a key sport in many countries such as South Africa, Great Britain, and New Zealand. With a sport that is widely popular throughout the world and quickly growing here in America, it is clearly obvious that their could be some type of economic benefit. For one, if we grew rugby as a sport here in the United States, we would could get earn money for big matches due to the amount of tourism and tickets that would be sold from that event. Just by offering to host bigger matches in the United States, they would be increasing revenue for flight companies, the tourism in the city that it is hosted in, and from the ticket sales.
The next step would be to host the Rugby World Cup. Although it may not have the glitz and glamour that may come with hosting the olympics, but it does come with similar economic benefits. The Rugby World Cup added approximately 1.5 billion dollars in economic output to the United Kingdom. On top of that, they were able to sell over 2.3 million tickets for the big match. With rugby still being uncommon, but growing to be much more popular, the money America would make from hosting this event would greatly outweigh the money we spent.It seems like the United States better boot-up and hop on this rugby train, because they could be looking at some easy economic benefits.
Future Research: What effect has rugby's rising popularity had on other sports?
Future Research: What effect has rugby's rising popularity had on other sports?
This is a very interesting topic. I liked that you used data when describing the amount of money that is generated from rugby tournaments because it kind of puts your argument in perspective in regards to the actual benefits that it could bring. Maybe talk about rugby tournaments that are in the U.S now and the money that they generate.
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