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On the surface it may seem like a simple marketing deal but U.S.A. Rugby's new partnership with IMG to brand and market essentially all of U.S.A. Rugby's college championships is big news for several reasons. The deal, which is for 10 years, comes on the heels of U.S.A. Rugby switching their 7s championship to the spring, aligning it near the same time as the CRC. The idea behind the deal is to attract better sponsors to the tournaments and to get them on television, something the CRC has been much better at doing over the last few years.
What this move signals is that U.S.A. Rugby is doubling down on their efforts to reassert control over college rugby as well as a tacit admittance that running tournaments is not their forte. When you consider the IMG deal along with their partnership with The Legacy Agency to promote the Eagles-All Blacks match there is a definite trend of U.S.A. Rugby looking elsewhere to make sure events come off well.
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If you consider the early returns from the All Blacks match it's a great partnership. The match is set to triple the previous attendance record for a match on U.S. soil and even after Legacy takes their cut U.S.A. Rugby is in for a strong pay day. U.S.A. Rugby has done well over the last few years ensuring that they had successful matches in Houston as well as in places like Sacramento. However, they simply don't have the resources to successful put on and market all of the Eagles summer matches, club championships, and college championships. The IMG deal is a recognition of that. Now U.S.A. Rugby can take less profit in the short term (if there even is any in college championships) while having longer term gains.
Frankly the partnership with Legacy has been exactly what U.S.A. Rugby needed to do to elevate the Eagles. Playing the All Blacks is a huge deal and it's coming off fantastically. If it had been a disaster it could have set the sport back. Now they have momentum and the goal will be to get 20,000 fans at each of the Eagles matches next summer, not just one 20,000 event followed by 5,000. If the Eagles want to have more assembly time ahead of the World Cup and beyond they need the revenue, which is exactly what the partnership with Legacy has provided. Now U.S.A. Rugby is looking to do the same with college rugby.
The choice to pump up their college championships is a definite reaction to United World Sports and the Varsity Cup and CRC. Both of those tournaments have done extremely well at dominating the headlines (for just reasons, especially in the case of the Varsity Cup) as well as getting television exposure. In a sense all rugby fans owe UWS a debt of gratitude for pushing the game forward. If they hadn't take the steps to get the game on television then U.S.A. Rugby would have never had to up the ante.
The IMG deal is also a recognition of mistakes made by U.S.A. Rugby. Selling off the USA 7s to United World Sports has been a huge plus to the game in the United States but giving us the Las Vegas 7s but it hasn't been a winner for U.S.A. Rugby. They don't see the profits from the even other than what they sold it for. The same thing goes with selling the rights to professional 7s to William Tatham. Partnering with someone like IMG and Legacy is much better in terms of return. You get someone else to run the event, for a profit of course, but get to maintain control.
It should be warned that just because IMG has signed on to market the college national championships that doesn't mean that the events will turn into moneymakers. There are very legitimate claims that as long as Cal and BYU play in the Varsity Cup that whoever wins the DI-A title still will not have the right to call themselves the best in the country. It's simply a debate that is not going to have a clean solution. Additionally, the Varsity Cup may be able to turn a profit because of the large crowd BYU typically draws at Rio Tinto and the fact that teams don't have to do as much last minute traveling. However, it's not a gold mine and the CRC definitely does not make money.
U.S.A. Rugby and IMG faces an uphill battle because they are late to the scene. Unless IMG can come up with something just as good as NBC the CRC is still going to have more of the headlines. The same goes with getting the DI-A final on the NBC Sports Network like the Varsity Cup final. There is no question that IMG has the track record but by now the rugby public is definitely knowledgable enough to know what's a strong tournament and what isn't.
So while the deal is a big deal, it's not going to change the college game overnight. Rather, it will likely set up a bigger showdown between U.S.A. Rugby and United World Sports. That could either bring the game to all new levels of acceptance, especially at the college level where there is still often a negative connotation or it could cause both to collapse by competing against each other over a market that isn't ready to be stretch. Either way grab the popcorn because that should be fun to watch.