Q&A with Major League Rugby Commissioner George Killebrew: Adapating, Growing Sport In United States, World Cup Bid

Professional sports leagues have roared back to life over the last few months, returning from varying lengths of postponements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Poised to make a big comeback later this month is Major League Rugby.

The 2021 regular season for North America’s largest professional rugby league will get underway in just a few weeks, with the first games being played on March 20. From there, 12 teams will play a 16-match slate before the MLR’s championship game takes place on August 1.

Major League Rugby was founded in 2017, but has already grown exponentially as the organization has tried to tap into a the sport’s rabid fanbase in the United States. Since the inaugural season in 2018, MLR has expanded from seven to 13 teams (the Dallas Jackals will join in 2022), showing impressive growth in a short period of time.

But there’s still plenty of work to do. After the 2020 season was brought to a halt after just five games, league commissioner George Killebrew was forced to navigate one of the most difficult situations in the league’s brief history just a few months after he took over the leadership role.

Now, with a new season just on the horizon, Major League Rugby is looking to come back with a bang. We recently caught up with Killebrew to talk about his experience in rugby, how the league has navigated COVID-19, MLR’s progress and a potential Rugby World Cup bid.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

The Spun: You spent 25+ years with the Dallas Mavericks before taking over as the commissioner of Major League Rugby. What kind of experience do you think you’ve been able to carry from there that’s been beneficial to these last few years?

George Killebrew: It’s not earth shattering. The NBA is very good at the fundamentals of sports business, which consists of selling tickets, selling local sponsorships, having a great game presentation, being a great community citizen, having good merchandise and having good local broadcast partners for your games. That’s kind of the secret sauce behind just running an NBA franchise off the court. I think that’s maybe why, through the (commissioner) search, they were attracted to me, because I’ve done that my whole career. What I tell our guys all the time is there is no other professional rugby league in North America. We’re the only ones… The rugby piece can be improved, but it’s just not our issue. We are playing the highest quality of rugby in North America. So it’s about all those other things that I just went through… When this league was formed, it was formed by rugby fans. These guys were businessmen that played the game. You look at our ownership group, and every one of them loves this sport. That’s why they’re doing it because if you’re doing it as of today to make money, you’re in the wrong business. So it was all about rugby, and not about sports marketing, sports business. As we’re changing the paradigm a little bit, we’re populating these team offices with people that have been in sports marketing at various levels. They’ve worked for NBA teams, they’ve worked in the MLS, they worked in Major League Baseball, they worked in a successful minor league operation. And we’re really honing in on those seven or eight tenets that make a local franchise successful.

The Spun: Did you really have any background in rugby before taking over in 2019?

Killebrew: No, not a bit. My only background is I worked for a guy named Mark Cuban. Mark and I worked together for 20 years and Mark played rugby at Indiana University. People think of him as a basketball guy, but his first love was rugby. He’s still very involved in the Indiana University rugby program. I’ve listened to his rugby stories ad nauseam for 20 years. I always had a curiosity factor about it. There was a club here in Dallas, the Harlequins, who played over near SMU, and I used to go to their matches. But the reason I went was because it was fun. I didn’t know anything about the game, but everyone else was going. So it’s back to why people attend things. I look back to that and I attended rugby matches, but I didn’t attend for the rugby. So that’s my ‘rich’ history in the sport.

The Spun: Could you walk me through the last few months and what it’s been like trying to get a season ready to go while navigating COVID-19?

George Killebrew: It’s been very touch and go. We have the benefit of watching the professional sports leagues, and the NCAA and all of that that’s gone before us, so we’re able to learn and kind of get some best practices. We have a pretty robust medical committee. They meet each week and kind of go through the data of what’s going on in the world. We’ve always targeted March 20 and 21 as the dates we wanted to start. We want to hopefully get a 16 match season, culminating, on August 1, where that would be the date of the MLR finals, which will be televised live on CBS… Our goal was to be able to hit that target. Our teams are now in training camp. Our COVID protocols are in place, and our teams are testing and the early signs are really, really good. I’m able to view the results of all the testing, and we’re doing pretty good, all things considered. (We’ve had) a couple small outbreaks on a team, but nothing catastrophic. It’s early enough where, if we get into these protocols, and the teams and the coaches and the GM, and everybody buys into it, because I can’t sit in Dallas and try to, you know, make sure everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to do. You’ve got to put some trust out there. And so far, so good.

The Spun: What can you tell me about those protocols you’ve implemented so far? You said you were kind of watching those other sports leagues, but obviously your situation is unique, particularly with having so many international players. How has that process worked so far?

Killebrew: For the international players, when they arrive, they quarantine, just like anything else. We’re not as capitalized as a league where we’re able to go to a bubble scenario for matches and things like that. Really the choice for us was to come up with good protocols, stick as close as we can, or not have a competition, right? Because we can’t spend the money that, the NBA, or the NHL spent in a bubble scenario just doesn’t work with us… So far the guys are doing what they’re supposed to do. The one thing we did learn, through all the protocols, it comes down, literally, to the individual team, and the players on the team. They’ve got to collectively decide that ‘geez, there are a ton of temptations out there, it’d be great to, you know, to break protocol, and go out with your mates.’ But you’ve got to make that decision in order for your team to be successful, and be a viable contender to play on August 1, it starts now. It starts by following these protocols, and putting safety at the forefront… So, you know, it’s a little harder for us, to be honest with you, because we don’t have the budgets and the capitalization that the major leagues have to really, do the things that they did to make sure that they didn’t have big outbreaks. Like I said early on, we’ve done pretty well.

The Spun: Do you feel in a good place right now to meet your goal and kick off the season on March 20?

Killebrew: Yeah, for sure. For sure. What’s kind of cool, with all the kind of the black cloud that we’ve all been kind of operating under this COVID scenario in the whole sports world, when the players report, and you see some stuff on social media and everything, and they’re kind of back with their mates… Because it’s all about that, right? So that kind of lifts your spirits a little bit. Now they’re in camp, and we’re getting close to the competition, and everyone gets a little bit more excited. Sure, it’s a watered down version. Some scenarios, there’ll be some fans in the stands, other scenarios there won’t. So it’s not perfect, but at the end of the day, people are excited about the games. Through television, we’ll do 35 nationally televised matches shared between CBS Sports Network, Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2. For the fans, nationally, they’ll be able to consume rugby through that medium. And then most every team is also doing local telecasts, when they’re not part of the national package. Maybe you’re not going to be able to be in-venue all the time, but you will still be able to follow (the teams) through other means.

The Spun: That actually segues into my next question. I know there have been some kind of big adjustments other than COVID related protocols or the 2021 season. Part of that is the expansion of TV partnerships for MLR, so what changes are coming in that department?

Killebrew: I think when the league started out, they got about 16 matches on CBS Sports Network, and then the finals on CBS. Also, CBS Sports Network is unrated, so you don’t really know how you’re doing. When I got here, I said, ‘we have a great partnership with CBS. But let’s add in another layer with Fox.’ FOX was really, really interested in rugby, and was really interested in working with us, which is kind of the key when you’re a challenger league is to work with people that love to work with you… And the ratings were really, really good, from where we were historically. The sad thing of shutting down after five weeks last season, was that really all of the economic indicators that sports teams are judged by, were pointing up. Attendance was up, our three expansion teams had all sold out their opening night games, our numbers were up on our OTT platform. Through five weeks, we were up by about 33% year over year, and then we got some really encouraging, TV rating numbers from FOX. And I was feeling really good… We were super healthy. And economic indicators are pointing up, like I thought this job was easy. And then COVID brought everything to a screeching halt, which was disappointing.

So that’s kind of a long winded answer on the TV piece. It’s a great game for television, when shot correctly. I watched a game from San Diego last year, which is in a beautiful stadium on a beautiful Southern California day. The stands were full and the people were having a blast. And I’m like, this is what it’s about. You watch that match and you go, ‘I don’t know a lot about rugby. But that looks like an event I would like to attend.’

The Spun: What direct steps have you and MLR been able to put together over the last couple years to grow the sport more at the youth level. Are there any tangible things of that nature, or other big projects, that you’re working toward in the immediate future?

Killebrew: First, I just want to touch on the MLR draft. When I got here that that pathway didn’t exist, right. We were missing that missing link. I wanted to add it, but I was also fearful that no one would show up, or if they even wanted that pathway. I kind of thought that we would do two rounds so we needed 24 people to fill those slots. We ended up having 475. Unfortunately, we had to do it under COVID, but once we’re not under COVID, we’re going to emulate those other major leagues. It’s a big, big day. It’s the culmination of the pathway. As you try to get kids interested in the game, you have to have those kinds of stories. So we did it, and we’re gonna keep doing it. And it was a wonderful day, all the way around.

Other than that, early on we realized we needed a content hub for the lack of a better term. All these teams, and the league and players, were all just getting content and stuff on their own accord. We figured, if we could partner with someone to make it really centralized, where fans, teams, players, league offices could go to one centralized area to get highlights or whatever it is would make it just a lot more seamless. We’ve done that, and we’ve rolled that out recently, so we’ll be able to coordinate media productions. We can empower the teams, the players, the fans to generate and contribute media on a level we’ve never been able to do before. So we’re excited about this league wide digital content ecosystem that we’ve created with a partner by the name of PT SportSuite.

We have an announcement coming out soon, about our OTT platform. The league when I got here was on a couple different platforms. For example, when you’re on ESPN, it’s one thing if you’re a big time player, but if you’re not, if you’re us as an emerging and a challenger league, you’re gonna get lost. You’re not getting promoted, there is no marketing around it and really only the faithful can find it… It’d be great if we could control our own destiny. It’d be great if we could start something with someone, that’s an expert in the field, and create our own platform. It’ll start with Major League Rugby, having the lion’s share of the content, but over time, maybe we can be the destination for all of rugby in North America. That’s a project we’ve been working on for quite a while that’s coming to fruition. We’re dotting eyes and crossing T’s with a partner, and it’s gonna be wonderful.

The Spun: You’ve mentioned the Rugby World Cup a few times in the past… is hosting that event a goal you’d like to push for?

Killebrew: The way World Rugby does it is that they award the World Cup in pairs. So, we will bid on 2027 and 2031. Typically, what World Rugby does is that they give it to a nation that has a traditional rugby background, and following, and then they also tend to give it to a challenger. Around 2027 in the U.S., we have the Soccer World Cup, and we have the Olympics, so it’s really crowded. The lobbying would be for 2031 and if that were the case, we would be a 14-year-old league, which is amazing. When the World Cup for soccer first came to the United States, there was no Major League Soccer, but in our case, if we were to expand by one or two teams a year by 2031, we could be 22 to 32 team league in the major cities in this country, and in Canada, and really be ready for a World Cup. It would really be an awesome thing. Hopefully, by then, our participation numbers will continue to grow… The last thing you’d want to do is host a World Cup and not be ready for it. I’m sure World Rugby is paying very close attention to that because it’s got to be great… We’re working in conjunction with USA Rugby to work on that bid and it would be a wonderful moment for rugby in the U.S.

The Spun: You’ve talked in the past about trying to expand the sport in the United States. What are your hopes for that moving forward beyond this year?

Killebrew: I think we do a pretty decent job of getting the rugby faithful to consume us in one way or the other. But it’s everybody else out there… So, we did a big study with Octagon, because we think we know who our fan is, but we’ve never done any research. The results said there’s this gigantic swath of people that are intrigued by rugby. They’re the types of people that kind of don’t want to follow the beaten path in sports. They don’t want to necessarily identify with the traditional professional teams. They want something they can own. Now, we’ve got to speak to those people. It’s an opportunity for us this year to really try to solidify them as rugby fans, when it comes to the whole entertainment package. It can’t just be about attending rugby matches, there’s got to be pageantry. There’s got to be all the things in professional sports in America that fans expect.

What we’re really trying to do at the end of the day is that when the family is sitting around the dinner table on a Wednesday night talking about what they want to do this weekend on Saturday. We want to be the answer to that question. When somebody says ‘Hey, what do you guys want to do this weekend, whether it’s a family or a group of buddies, or guy and his girlfriend, whatever it is, we want to be the answer to that question. The only way that’s going to occur is if we have something for everyone.

The 2021 Major League Rugby season will kick-off later this month, with the opening matches taking place on March 20.

You can read more of our interviews with athletes or media stars here.

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